


Queer Eye for the Spider Guy

by sahiya



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy RPF, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Domestic Fluff, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, May Parker (Spider-Man) & Tony Stark Coparenting Peter Parker, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Parent Tony Stark, Peter Parker Gets a Hug, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Peter Parker is a Mess, Supportive May Parker (Spider-Man), Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, Tony Stark Lives, do not copy to another site, self-care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-26
Updated: 2020-07-30
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:26:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 28,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25528900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sahiya/pseuds/sahiya
Summary: Peter's been out as Spiderman for a year and a half, and somehow his life is as much of a disaster as it's ever been. MJ's broken up with him, he lives in a shitty apartment and sleeps on a mattress on the floor, and he can't seem to show up on time for anyone in his life.Enter the Fab Five.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Michelle Jones/Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 198
Kudos: 447





	1. DAY ONE

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who cheerleaded this fic, most especially my beta Fuzzyboo, who has now read this at least twice. 
> 
> The whole fic is written. I'll be posting a chapter a day for the next five days. 
> 
> A couple of notes:
> 
> 1\. I do recommend watching at least one episode of the Netflix _Queer Eye_ reboot. I follow the structure pretty closely, and I also don't spend time describing anyone, so having at least one episode under your belt will help a lot with context. 
> 
> 2\. This fic requires some suspension of disbelief. I wrote it mostly because I wanted Karamo to help Peter sort his life out. Please do not comment just to tell me you find it implausible. :-P

Peter wanted it on record that it was not his idea. Originally, it was Ned’s idea, but Peter had made the mistake of repeating it to Tony _as a joke_ , and the next thing he knew, everyone else in his life had ganged up on him and decided it was a great idea. 

“But why?” Peter whined, the night before his life was scheduled to be invaded. Tony had come over and was watching him try to tidy his postage stamp studio. It had no storage, the kitchen was hideous, and he’d never bothered to get a bed frame when he’d moved in two years ago, so it probably wouldn’t make a difference, but he felt compelled to try anyway. May would kill him if he didn’t. 

“What do you mean, why?” Tony asked. 

“I mean, I don’t _need_ them to come and make me over. I’m fine.”

“Hmm.” Tony used a hanger to pick a pair of Peter’s underwear up off the floor. Peter grabbed them with a huff. “When was the last time you talked to MJ?”

That was just playing dirty. “A while.”

“And what did she say to you the last time you spoke to her?”

Peter heaved a sigh. “That she loved me, but she deserves to have someone who’s going to pull his weight in the relationship.”

“And what precipitated this?”

“I showed up to our anniversary dinner two hours late, covered in blood,” Peter admitted grudgingly. 

“You also missed Morgan’s last gymnastics meet, and you choose to live in a pit of your own filth for reasons I don’t fully understand.”

Peter didn’t answer. He knew Tony didn’t get his need to make do with the meager stipend he received as a PhD student. He could have lived at the compound, but then he would’ve been too far away from the city for patrolling every night, and anyway, he wasn’t ready to be a fulltime Avenger. 

But he’d been in this apartment for two years, so he probably could have bought a bed frame by now. Maybe then he wouldn’t have five queer guys (well, four queer guys and one queer nonbinary person) invading his life in the morning for the purpose of other people’s entertainment. 

“Anyway, you love the show, don’t you?” Tony said. “God knows we watched enough of it when you broke your leg last fall.”

“I do,” Peter admitted, wrapping his arms around himself, “it’s just... I only revealed my identity eighteen months ago. And now I have to bare my soul for everyone to see? There’s a bunch of stuff that I don’t want to talk about in public.”

“Hey.” Tony pushed off the wall and came to stand in front of Peter. He put a hand on each of Peter’s biceps and squeezed gently. “Don’t worry too much about that, all right? The producers signed an agreement, and our PR folks are going to keep a close eye on everything. Nothing is going to be aired that you’re not comfortable with. Just try to relax and have a good time. You never let other people take care of you.”

Peter frowned at Tony. “You take care of me all the time.”

Tony rolled his eyes. “Pete. You literally have to be _in traction_ before you’ll let anyone take care of you.”

Peter didn't think that was strictly true. Tony still fixed his suit half the time. He wouldn’t let Tony give him money on a regular basis, but any time he was in danger of overdrawing his account, an extra five hundred dollars would mysteriously appear. Peter pretended not to see it, and Tony never said a word. 

He wasn’t sure what else Tony wanted him to do. 

“It’s okay, kid,” Tony said after a few seconds. He pulled Peter into a hug, then kissed him on the top of his head. “I love you just the way you are. I just worry about you, and I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy,” Peter protested. Tony pulled away and looked at him, one eyebrow raised. “I’m happy enough.”

“Yeah, call me crazy, but that’s not good enough for me.” Tony squeezed him again. “I’ll get out of your hair. Get some sleep tonight, all right?” 

Peter grimaced. “I’ll try.”

“And don’t go patrolling!” Tony added as he left. “You don’t need a black eye in the morning.”

For once, Peter heeded Tony’s advice. He half-heartedly cleaned for another half hour, then showered and dropped down to lie on his mattress on the floor. He stared up at the ceiling, listening to the thrum of the city –– the sirens two streets over, the loud conversation at the bus stop halfway down the block, the TV someone was watching four stories down. It was somehow too loud and yet comforting at the same time. 

It wasn’t really that Peter expected life to be easy. His life had never been easy. But he kind of thought that at some point, life would get easi _er_. Instead, it just seemed to get more and more overwhelming with every passing year, with more to do and less time to do it in, and never enough money to be comfortable. It was exhausting. It was all exhausting. 

And even when he had the time to sleep he couldn’t. Peter sighed and rolled over, listening to the sounds of the city until, sometime on the other side of two in the morning, he fell asleep. 

***

“So our hero today is a true _super_ hero,” Jonathan announced from the front seat. Strictly speaking, it’d been Bobby’s turn to give the intro, but Jonathan had grabbed the dossier out of his hands as they’d gotten in the car. “We are going to be helping Peter Parker, AKA _Spiderman_!”

“What?” Antoni yelled from the backseat. 

“Yes, ladies, we are helping out Spiderman _himself_. Peter Parker is twenty-four years old, he lives in Queens –– we all know this, if you don’t know Spiderman lives in Queens, then you’ve been living under a rock, and I can’t help you –– and he was nominated by Tony Fucking Stark.”

“Are you going to call him ‘Tony Fucking Stark’ every single time and make them bleep it out?” Karamo asked, both hands on the wheel as he navigated New York City surface streets. 

“Save the universe, honey, and I will call you ‘Karamo Fucking Brown,’ all right?” he replied. “So, Tony Fucking Stark says that that while Peter is wonderful and generous and amazing in all ways, he’s also a ‘human disaster.’”

“Uh oh, what does that mean?” Bobby asked. “Sounds ominous.”

“I have a question,” Tan interjected, raising his hand. “Has anyone ever seen him in anything other than the Spider suit?”

There was a beat of silence. 

“He has to have other clothes,” Antoni said. “He’s got a job, right? Or is the superhero gig full time?”

“It says here that he’s a PhD student in bioinformatics at NYU,” Jonathan replied. “Goodness me, brawn _and_ brains.”

“So what you’re telling me,” Tan said, looking pained, “is that he spends all his time in a lab, and when he leaves the lab, he wears a spandex suit.”

“Yeah, you might have it the worst this time,” Bobby said. 

Jonathan held up his hand. “Hold that thought, because Tony Fucking Stark says that Peter lives in a very small apartment that –– quoting him now –– ’hurts my soul’ and he doesn’t even have a bed frame. He sleeps on a mattress on the floor.”

“Nooooooo,” Bobby moaned, slumping over into Antoni and thumping his forehead against his shoulder. “Why? Why do men in their twenties do this? Literally no one has ever found a mattress on the floor sexy. No one.”

“And you know that if the mattress is on the floor, the bathroom is a crime scene,” Jonathan added. 

“Hey, you know, sometimes money is a genuine issue,” Karamo pointed out. 

“He was nominated by Tony Stark!” Bobby yelled. “If he wanted a bed frame, he could have a bed frame!”

“That actually brings us to the big thing, which is what Tony Fucking Stark calls Peter’s ‘dysfunctional self-reliance,’” Jonathan interjected, before they got sidetracked again. “He and Peter’s Aunt May –– who raised him –– both say that Peter won’t let anyone help him, and they’re worried that he’s going to burn out before he’s thirty.”

“Legit,” Bobby said. 

Jonathan shut the binder with a snap. “Well, our job this week is to take this Spider-disaster to a Spider-master –– of his own life!”

Everyone cheered. Jonathan reached into the back, and Bobby, Antoni, and Tan gave him upside down high-fives.

“This one’s gonna be a good time,” Karamo said. “I can feel it.” 

***

The show’s producers had told Peter to swing around a particular neighborhood after two o’clock. At two o’clock, Peter was obediently swinging through Sunnyside, keeping an eye out for an SUV with the license plate “FAB 5.”

While he waited, he helped a young woman find her dog, helped an older woman carry some shopping into her building, and pointed a couple of tourists toward the subway. By then it was three o’clock, AKA “Tamale Time.” He swung over and got his usual order from the tamale truck and posed for photos with a couple of kids from the middle school down the block. 

He expected the Fab Five to ambush him while he was shoving a tamale in his mouth, but they didn’t. He finished his snack, then shot another web and swung off, looping aimlessly around the neighborhood. 

“Peter, I found the car you asked me to look out for,” Karen said. “It is one block south and two blocks west of where you are now.”

“Oh yeah? Light it up, Kare-Bear. Stealth mode. Keep me off the cameras.” 

Karen lit up the route, and Peter followed it. Once he got close, he stopped and climbed to the top of one of the buildings to get a good view of what was going on. 

He spotted the SUV immediately. Four of the guys were inside, and one of them, clad in a hoodie and a pair of sunglasses, was standing by with a paper bag of groceries in one hand. Peter thought it was probably Antoni, judging by his build. There were also a couple of camera guys, carefully concealed, but Peter picked them out easily. 

It was obviously a set-up. Peter could guess at the rough outlines: once he got close, Antoni would drop the groceries in the middle of the intersection, and Peter would swoop down to help him, only to be surprised. 

For a second, Peter thought about just swinging away in the opposite direction. They’d find him eventually, but it’d buy him some time. On the other hand... he could teach them not to try and sneak up on Spiderman. And while Peter Parker was terrified of giving away too much of himself in this process, Spiderman wasn’t scared of anything. 

Two quick swings and Peter dropped down to land on top of the SUV. There were four startled yelps from inside the car. 

“I hope you weren’t thinking you could surprise me in _my_ neighborhood,” Peter said. He hesitated for half a beat before reaching up to pull his mask off. Even now, eighteen months later, it never stopped feeling weird to be without his mask in public. 

Antoni cracked up. The doors to the SUV swung open and the others poured out. 

“We should’ve known better,” Karamo said, reaching up to shake his hand. “Though in all fairness, one of our camera guys had his eye on you for most of the afternoon.”

“Wait, what?” Peter said. “Really?”

“We’ve been watching you help old ladies cross the street,” Tan said. 

“Well, that’s what I do,” Peter replied, and backflipped down off the SUV. “I’m just your friendly neighborhood Spiderman.”

“Uh huh, yes, we all absolutely believe that,” Jonathan said. “We’re just going to ignore the fact that you’re an Avenger. Oh my God, look at your little baby face, and those cheekbones. Can I touch your hair?”

“Uh, I guess––”

Jonathan immediately put his fingers in Peter’s hair. “It’s so soft. Do you use any product at all?”

“Okay, wait,” Antoni broke in, “before you start on him, let’s head back to his place. I can’t wait to see the apartment that hurts Tony Stark’s soul.”

“Is that what he told you?” Peter groaned. “Seriously, Tony is such a drama queen, and his standards are ridiculous. It’s really not that bad.”

“Sure,” Bobby said, in a tone that said he definitely did not buy one ounce of whatever Peter was selling. “Come on, let’s go!”

Peter tried to convince them to let him swing home, but they wouldn’t hear of it. Peter let them herd him into the SUV. Antoni climbed into the far back, Tan and Bobby sat upfront, and Karamo and Jonathan sandwiched Peter in the middle.

He was in a car. With the Fab Five. Ned was going to die when Peter told him.

Peter cleared his throat. “So, uh, are there cameras in here?” 

“Yeah, but they’re not rolling,” Karamo said. “In fact, this is a good time for us to talk without the cameras on. We like to get an idea of how you feel about things before everything starts. It can get kind of intense.”

“Yeah, I know, I’ve watched the show. Like, all of it.”

“Okay, good. You know how it works, then. So how are you feeling about all of this?”

Peter shrugged. “Fine, I guess.”

“And what does that mean?” Jonathan asked. He started playing with Peter’s hair again. 

“Um... mostly fine, but just kind of... nervous. There’s stuff that I don’t want out in public, and I’m worried I’m going to slip up and reveal something I don’t want to.”

Peter didn’t miss the look that bounced around the car from one to another like a ping pong ball. “Peter, we’re not here to make your life harder,” Karamo said. “Our producers sat down and had a long conversation with the Starks’ PR folks, and we understand that there are things that are off-limits. The editors can do amazing things with the footage –– no one will ever know if we cut something out. Okay?”

Peter nodded, relaxing a little. “It’s just weird. I kept a really big secret for a long time.”

“I think you’ll find that we all know how that feels,” Bobby said. “It’s not the same thing, but it also kind of is.”

“Also, vulnerability is a practice,” Jonathan told him, petting Peter’s hair like he was a cat. “Like yoga. The more you do it, the easier it becomes, and the more you get out of it.”

“I guess I hadn’t thought of it that way before,” Peter said, still feeling somewhat dubious. 

“It’s okay if you don’t trust us just yet,” Karamo said. “It’s on us to earn that trust. All we ask is that you’re open to it.”

Peter didn’t answer immediately. He thought again about how overwhelming life felt sometimes, and how there didn’t seem to be anyone he could really open up to about that anymore. He didn’t want to worry May. Tony would just try to fix everything for him. He had Ned and MJ, but MJ had run out of patience for his bullshit years ago, and Ned tended to freak out. 

“Yeah,” Peter said quietly. “Yeah, okay.”

“Good.” Karamo squeezed his shoulder. 

The SUV pulled up in front of Peter’s ramshackle apartment building. “Let’s do this thing,” Jonathan said, and the six of them climbed out of the car. Peter let them into the building and led them up the five flights of stairs to his apartment at the top. 

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Karamo said, halfway up the last flight. “You do this all the time?”

“Not really,” Peter said. “I mostly come and go using other means.”

“Right,” Bobby said, definitely a little out of breath. “But you have to haul groceries up and down sometimes, right?”

“Sometimes,” Peter hedged. He decided it was better not to mention that it had been weeks since he’d been to the grocery store. They’d realize it soon enough when they saw his fridge.

They crowded onto the landing outside Peter’s apartment. Peter took a deep, bracing breath, and let them in. “Here it is. Home sweet home. Or something.”

Peter had tried to clean up. He really had. But the space was small, and more than that, it was kind of drab, with a cheap 80s kitchen and moldings clogged with at least five decades of paint. His mattress sat on the floor, shoved up against the wall in one corner. On the other side of the room, his desk was covered in broken down computer parts. Peter had forgotten to close the closet doors that morning, so they hung open, revealing a laundry hamper that was overflowing.

“I’ve seen much worse,” Bobby announced. 

Peter exhaled suddenly. “Really?”

“God, yes, so much worse. This is a blank slate. You haven’t done anything with it. How long have you been here?”

“Oh, um... two years?”

“Two years?” Tan said, turning from where he’d already started eyeing the overflowing hamper. “Two years and you haven’t got a sofa? Or a bedframe?”

“There isn’t any room for a sofa,” Peter said, frowning at the space. It was seriously tiny. 

“There’s room for a small sofa,” Bobby assured him. “And a table, too. Where do you eat?”

“Um. On the bed, mostly. Or, like, at the counter.”

“Standing at the counter?” Antoni said, going into the kitchen. 

“Yeah.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t have a table. Or a chair.”

“Yeah, we’re going to fix that.” Bobby crossed his arms and did a slow turn in the center of the room. “I’m seeing good light and prewar charm. We can work with that. And hey, it actually doesn’t smell like man musk in here. Congratulations on not being gross.”

Peter blinked. “Um, thanks?”

“Oh my God, there is nothing in this fridge!” Antoni yelled. 

Peter had known it was coming, but it was still embarrassing. He shuffled sheepishly toward the kitchen. “There’s stuff in there.”

“What, you mean this fine selection of energy drinks?” Antoni started pulling them out and lining them up on the counter. “We got blue, we got yellow, we got red, we got green. Literally nothing in any of these is found in nature.”

Peter shrugged. “I’m busy. I don’t cook very much.”

“But don’t you have, like, the body of a professional athlete? Don’t you need to take care of yourself physically?”

“Not really. It kind of does what it does no matter what I put in it.”

“Oh to be young again,” Tan sighed as he started separating Peter’s clothes into piles. 

“But do you like to cook?” Antoni pressed Peter. 

Peter shrugged. “Kind of? My Uncle Ben was the cook in the family. He taught me how to make lasagna and spaghetti and meatballs. After...” Peter stopped. His uncle’s death was one of the things he really didn’t want to talk about on camera in any detail. But mentioning it was probably okay. “After my uncle died when I was fourteen, I did a lot of the cooking, because my aunt isn’t very good at it. But cooking just for myself... I don’t know, there never seems to be any point.”

“What kinds of things did you used to cook?” Antoni asked, leaning one hip against the counter.

“A lot of Italian. Later on, I’d make stuff in the slow cooker –– beef stew, chili, that sort of thing.”

Antoni nodded. “I think that sort of meal makes a lot of sense when you’re busy and mostly cooking for yourself. You can make a lot of it and then freeze whatever you don’t want to eat right away in portions. But your face didn’t light up when you talked about beef stew the way it did when you talked about making Italian food with your uncle. What’s the one thing of his you want to learn how to make?”

“Lasagna,” Peter said, without hesitation. “And maybe meatballs, but mostly –– yeah, my Uncle Ben’s lasagna.”

“Okay,” Antoni said, squeezing his shoulder. “Thanks for sharing that with me about your uncle. But you do know that in order to make lasagna you need more in your fridge than energy drinks, right?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Peter said, rolling his eyes. “I get it, I’m a mess.”

“Antoni, can I steal Peter from you?” Tan called. 

“Sure, I’m just going to go through the only other thing he’s got in his fridge –– twelve kinds of hot sauce.”

“I like hot sauce,” Peter protested, letting himself be steered over to his closet. 

“You also like science puns,” Tan said, gesturing toward the t-shirts he’d pulled out. “And _Star Wars_.”

“Yeah, I’m kind of a nerd,” Peter admitted. 

“And that’s great,” Tan said, holding up a shirt against Peter’s chest. “Actually, I like a lot of these t-shirts. They’re not too big on you, though I think you should buy your jeans a size smaller than you have been. But the issue is that you have a young face –– which, believe me, is a blessing. But you don’t want to get carded for the rest of your life, do you?”

He had a point, loathe though Peter was to admit it. “I get mistaken for an undergraduate at least three times a week. It’s kind of annoying.”

“So that’s something we can work on,” Tan said. 

“But you’re not going to throw out _all_ my science t-shirts, right?” Peter asked nervously. 

“No, just the ones that have holes in them or where the logo is faded into nothing.” Tan turned back around and started sorting again. “Carry on!”

“My turn!” Jonathan said, popping his head out of the bathroom. “Come in here and explain to me why you’ve got an 18-in-1 soap in your shower and literally nothing else.”

Peter tried not to sigh. Most of the camera crew followed him into the bathroom, though one stayed in the living room, presumably to capture the others’ reactions without Peter around. He did his best not to overhear what they were saying. He really, truly did not want to know.

“Okay, so talk to me, Peter,” Jonathan said. “You get up in the morning and what do you do?”

“Shower,” Peter said with a shrug. 

“And you do everything with this?” Jonathan said, holding up Peter’s 18-in-1 scent-free soap. 

“Yeah, kind of. It’s practical. And it doesn’t smell like much to me. Most soaps smell terrible.”

“Okay, so you’ve got some scent sensitivities,” Jonathan said. “We can totally work with that. But I’ll tell you, you shouldn’t wash your dishes and your face and your hair with the exact same soap. Do you ever get breakouts?”

“Yeah, sometimes,” Peter admitted. “Especially if I’ve been spending a lot of time in the suit with my mask on.”

“Okay, this?” Jonathan held up the soap. “Is not helping with that. It’s stripping away all the good oils from your skin, and then you overproduce oil to make up for it, and that’s how you get breakouts. So keep using it for your hands, dishes, even your body-wash, but we’re getting you a new shampoo and a new face cleanser.”

“Okay,” Peter agreed. 

“Do you use moisturizer?”

“Not really.”

“ _Everyone_ should use moisturizer, honey.” He put his hands on Peter’s shoulder and squeezed. “I promise this is going to be fun. You have gorgeous skin and gorgeous hair, and we’re going to pamper you until you feel as gorgeous as you are.”

Privately, Peter was skeptical, but it seemed wrong to argue with Jonathan Van Ness about _anything_ , so he just nodded.

“So, Peter,” Bobby said, once they’d filed back out of the bathroom, “tell me what’s going on over here.” He pointed to the desk covered in computer parts. 

“Oh, that’s kind of my workshop? I have a real workshop at Tony’s place, but I still like buying stuff cheap on Craigslist or whatever and building whatever I can out of it.”

“And how else do you use the apartment? Do you ever have people over?”

“Not really. Sometimes Tony or May, or my friend Ned.” He carefully didn’t mention MJ, who’d been his most frequent visitor since he’d moved in –– right up until the last three months, when she hadn’t been there at all.

“No other friends?” 

Peter shrugged. “Keeping a gigantic secret isn’t really conducive to making friends. Ned’s known about Spiderman since I was in high school. Almost everyone else... there were people I really liked, but it was always there between us, you know?”

“Yeah,” Bobby said, “I really, really do. But you’re out now, and you’ve been out for about eighteen months. You haven’t made any friends since?”

Peter grimaced. “Well, now it’s weird for other reasons. Some of the friends I did make in college feel like I lied to them, or didn’t trust them. And people I meet now... I’m not always sure what their motive is, you know?”

“Yeah, I can see that. But do you feel like the space itself and the fact that it’s so unfinished might also be getting in your way? I mean, there’s nowhere for anyone to sit.”

Peter hadn’t really thought about it that way, even though MJ had often complained about the lack of a chair or sofa. “Maybe? Probably.”

Bobby nodded. “Okay. I’m going to set this place up so that if you do want to have one or two people over, you can do that without everyone having to sit on the floor or the... mattress.” He side-eyed the bed. 

Peter winced. “Yeah. That sounds good. I mean, it’s not that I _want_ to live like this. I don’t.”

“Is money the main issue?” Bobby asked. 

Peter hesitated. He wanted to say yes, but he knew that wasn’t really it. Or it was, but it also wasn’t. And he had the feeling Bobby knew that. “Not really. I just... I don’t know how to be any other way.”

“Let’s talk about that,” Karamo said, putting his arm around Peter’s shoulders. He gently tugged Peter down so they both sat on the floor, then gestured to the others to sit as well. They sat in a circle, legs crossed, aside from Jonathan, who sprawled out and put his head in Antoni’s lap. “What would you like your life to look like?”

“Um.” Peter swallowed. “I don’t know. I want a nice place to live that I don’t have to apologize for, I guess. But I want to take care of myself. Tony’s always throwing money at me and trying to get me to let him buy me an apartment, and I just, I don’t want that.”

Karamo held his hands up. “Hey, we respect that. What else?”

“I want... I want my relationships to be better. My relationships with Ned and May and Tony and Tony’s daughter Morgan –– she’s like my sister –– and... and other people, I know they suffer because I’m Spiderman. I want to be a good friend, but sometimes I _can’t_ be, because I have this other thing that’s really important. And mostly they understand, but I know that sometimes I hurt them.”

“Mmm. Is that what happened with her?” Karamo turned around the framed photo of Peter and MJ that Peter kept by the bed. It had been taken at Tony’s birthday party last year, on the balcony of Stark Tower. Peter had managed to make it on time for once, and he didn’t have a black eye or butterfly bandages across his forehead. MJ was stunning in a red dress May and Pepper had talked her into. The city glowed behind them in the dusk light.

It had been a good night –– a really good night. 

Peter felt himself flush. “Um. Yeah.”

“What’s her name?” 

“MJ.”

“You want to tell us more about her?”

Peter didn’t, but there was no getting out of it. “Um. So she... she and I got together in high school, and we kind of broke up and got back together a bunch in college, like I guess everyone does. After we both graduated and moved back here, we decided to try and make it work. Only I screwed up.”

“What do you mean, you screwed up?” Karamo asked.

Peter grimaced. “I showed up to our anniversary dinner two hours late and covered in blood, because –– it doesn’t matter. Because of Spiderman stuff. And MJ... not much freaks her out, but that was kind of the last straw. I’d been a huge flake for weeks leading up to it, and I think she just wanted to know that I could put her first _once_.” Peter’s voice cracked. “She told me that she deserves to have someone who’s going to be an equal partner, and she left.”

“I’m sorry,” Antoni said quietly. “That sounds really hard. You were together off and on for what, eight years? That’s longer than a lot of marriages.” 

“I couldn’t even be mad at her,” Peter said miserably. “She wasn’t wrong about anything. I just don’t know how to make it all work. And –– and I’m really tired. I’m _so_ tired.”

He realized with horror that he was close to tears. _Goddammit_. This was why he hadn’t wanted to do this. Bobby reached over and put a hand on his knee. Jonathan handed him a tissue. Peter mumbled his thanks. 

“So, this week is a good time for you to take a break,” Karamo said. “I think you’ll find that when you’re well-rested, it’s easier to think clearly about your life. And listen, we might not be superheroes, but we all know what it’s like to keep a really big secret. We know what kind of effect that has on your relationships with other people. We’re here to help you figure this stuff out.”

Peter nodded. “Thank you.”

“And maybe at the end of the week,” Bobby added, “you can have some people over –– the people closest to you –– and give a little party to thank them for supporting you through this whole transition. I think all of us have people we wouldn’t have made it through our coming out experiences without, you know? And sometimes we assume those people know how important they are to us, but often they don’t. So expressing that gratitude is important.”

“I’d like that,” Peter said. “I know it hasn’t been easy on them –– on any of them, but I think my aunt might have had it the hardest. She’s spent all these years supporting me, even though it scared the hell out of her. I’d really like to get the chance to thank her.”

“Okay, then, that’s our plan.” Karamo nodded to the camera crew, and they started to pack it in. “We’re looking forward to helping you, but for now we’ll get out of your hair. You’re staying at Stark Tower this week, right?”

Peter relaxed, now that the cameras were no longer rolling. “Yeah, I was going to head over after this, squeeze some patrolling in on the way.”

“Or you could _not_ do that,” Karamo pointed out. “You patrolled this afternoon. You could just go have dinner with your family. Take the evening off.”

Peter shrugged. “I have time, and it’s basically on the way. I’ll still get there on time –– well, almost on time.”

Karamo didn't quite look disapproving, but Peter had the impression he disagreed with the decision. “Okay, you do you, Peter. Get a good night’s sleep, though, because we’re picking this up again tomorrow.”

Peter saw them to the door, and listened as the five of them trooped down five flights of stairs. Then he took a deep breath. He needed to decompress before seeing Tony and Morgan and Pepper, and the best way to do that was to webswing to the tower. And if he just happened to run into someone in trouble on the way, he wasn’t going to _not_ help them. But he wouldn’t go looking for it, he promised himself. It would be an easy, quick trip. 

Famous last words.

***

It was quiet for a minute or two after the Fab Five piled back into the SUV, with Antoni behind the wheel this time and no cameras running. All of them were coming down from having been “on” for several hours. Karamo was thinking about the way Peter’s voice had broken when he’d said that he was tired. 

Peter had been Spiderman for ten years, Karamo thought. _Ten years_. If he was going to make it through ten more, he clearly had to make some changes. 

Tan cleared his throat. “It’s been a while since we’ve had someone cry on the first day.”

“He’s really underwater,” Karamo said. “And the stuff with MJ broke his heart. You can see it.”

“Are you going to try and talk to her?” Antoni asked. “Get her angle on things?”

“I might,” Karamo said. He thought that was probably the thread to pull on, if he really wanted to unravel the mess that was Peter Parker’s life. But he also never pressured a significant other, much less an ex-significant other, to appear on camera if they didn’t want to. “I’ll see if we can. But really, I think this one is going to be all about balance. He’s let Spiderman swamp everything else in his life. I see why the people who care about him are worried about burnout.”

“I have to say,” Bobby said, “based on the dossier, I was expecting him to serve us some serious manchild in that apartment, but it’s more like he’s a monk.”

“That’s probably a good analogy,” Karamo said. “He’s in service to something larger than himself. But he’s gotta realize that even if that’s true, he still has to take care of himself. Otherwise he’s going to burn right out.”

“And putting up walls doesn’t help you serve anyone,” Jonathan added sagely. 

“You got any ideas?” Karamo asked Bobby. 

“Too many,” Bobby said. “We have permission from the building to paint and do some minor repairs, but I think the bulk of it’s going to be getting him some furniture. It’s not a terrible apartment, actually –– I was expecting mold or mildew or something, but he just hasn’t ever moved in.”

“He needs to learn how to let other people help,” Karamo said, “and also how to be there for the people in his life. He helps so many people as Spiderman, but it sounds like MJ broke up with him because he couldn’t be there for her in any kind of consistent way. But that runs both directions.”

There was a general murmur of agreement, then a beat of silence. “Anyone know what’s for dinner?” Tan asked after a moment. 

“There’s Thai food waiting at the loft,” Antoni said, glancing up from his phone. 

“Thank God,” Bobby said. “It’s gonna be a long night.”

Karamo tuned out the rest of the conversation, turning his mind back to Peter. He hadn’t wanted to argue with him on the first day; there would be time later to challenge Peter’s beliefs about himself and his life, once they’d built a bit more trust. But he hoped he didn’t stay out too late. Tomorrow was a big day.


	2. DAY TWO

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Fuzzyboo for the beta!

Peter jolted awake with the immediate sense that something was wrong. It took him a few seconds to realize he was in his rarely used room at Stark Tower, and a few more to remember why he was there. He relaxed, recalling that for once, he didn’t have to be anywhere first thing in the morning. Antoni was going to pick him up at 9:30 –– an unthinkably luxurious hour to start the day –– and that was a full ninety minutes from now. 

He got up, showered, dressed. He went out to the kitchen and found Tony at the island, working on a tablet. He glanced up when Peter came in. “Hey, kiddo. Coffee’s hot, and I put a plate in the fridge for you.”

“Pepper and Morgan leave already?” Peter asked, pouring himself a cup of coffee. 

“Yeah, a while ago now. Morgan had gym time this morning.”

“Was she still mad at me?” Peter pulled the plate of breakfast Tony had made for him out of the fridge and put it in the microwave. 

“You could say that.”

Peter sighed. “I didn’t mean to be so late last night. I just got caught up. I stopped a mugging, and then I had to wait with the poor woman for the police so I could give them a statement. I couldn’t just leave her there on the curb. I didn't know that Morgan was going to be so upset about it.”

Tony put his tablet down and leveled a gaze at Peter. “You know that it’s not really about last night, right? It’s about her birthday this year. It’s about May’s birthday last year. It’s about Mo’s last gymnastics meet and Pepper and my anniversary party. If it was once in a while, she wouldn’t care, but these things... they don’t just accumulate, they compound each other.”

Peter took his plate out of the microwave and sat down at the island. “Yeah, I get it. I suck. But what does she want from me? Spiderman is important.”

“Is Spiderman more important than your relationship with Morgan?” Tony asked quietly. “Because right now, she feels like it is.”

Peter didn’t know what to say to that. “I don’t think about it that way.”

“I know you don’t,” Tony said. “I didn’t either. I spent years doing the same thing –– putting Iron Man before everything else in my life, even though it damn near cost me my relationship with Pepper. I couldn’t stop. If I stopped, then what was the point of me at all?”

Peter stared down at his plate. He hadn’t managed to take a single bite of breakfast so far. “Karamo told me not to patrol on my way over. He said I should just head to the tower and have dinner with you. But I’d done that, that woman would’ve been mugged and maybe hurt.”

Tony vented a sigh. “You live in New York City, Peter. Crime happens. You can’t stop all of it, and you’re going to kill yourself trying. But we’ve had this conversation a lot. Maybe you’ll listen to other people.”

“What happened to ‘I love you just the way you are’?” Peter asked, frowning at him. “Because you sure seem to want me to change. But maybe this is just who I am. Maybe I’m always going to be unreliable, because Spiderman comes first for me. Maybe I’m always going to be showing up late, covered in blood, or not at all, because _I can’t stop_.”

Tony didn’t react in the slightest to Peter’s raised voice. “If I thought it made you happy, I’d support that.”

“Well, maybe I just don’t get to be happy,” Peter snapped. “Did you ever think of that?”

“No,” Tony said quietly. “I don’t think any parent would be willing to accept that for their child.”

Peter felt like all the air had been sucked out of his lungs. That still happened sometimes, when Tony referred to Peter as his kid or to himself as Peter’s parent. 

In the silence, Tony stood up and ruffled Peter’s hair gently. “I’m gonna make some more coffee.”

Peter didn’t say anything until Tony had made another pot of coffee and returned to the table with his mug. By then, Peter had forced himself to take a couple of bites, even if the eggs tasted like sawdust in his mouth. 

“Sometimes I really do think that,” Peter admitted, then. “That I just don’t get to be happy like other people.”

“Why?” Tony asked simply. 

“I don’t know,” Peter whispered. 

Tony reached across the table and took Peter’s hand in his. “I don’t believe that you don’t get to be happy. I refuse.”

Peter couldn’t quite speak. When he finally could, he said, “Maybe this is coming at a really good time for me after all.”

“Oh really? And whose brilliant idea was it again?”

Peter gave a watery laugh. “Ned’s.”

Tony scoffed. “Okay, but who actually made it happen?”

“You.”

“Exactly. Ned can have... let’s say sixteen percent of the credit. I want the rest.”

Peter chuckled weakly. Tony opened his arms, and Peter fell into them. He felt Tony’s vibranium hand come up to hold the back of his head, while his flesh hand slid up and down his back. “I don’t want you to change who you are,” Tony murmured to him. “I love that generous, reckless, brilliant person. But sometimes I wish you would change _how_ you are, maybe make some different choices.”

Peter couldn’t argue with that, he supposed. His choices lately –– for the last ten years, some people would argue –– hadn’t been great. He couldn’t regret all of them, but he knew that Tony and May were probably right to be worried. 

He and Tony moved on to easier topics after that –– the paper Peter was currently working on, plans for spending a few weeks this summer at the lake house, Peter’s most recent round of upgrades to the web shooters. It wasn’t until FRIDAY let them know that Antoni was waiting for Peter downstairs that Peter realized how much time had passed. 

Peter gave Tony an extra hug, just before he got in the elevator. “Thanks for breakfast.”

“Anytime, kiddo. You know that.”

It had been too long since he and Tony had had the chance to just sit and talk. Their visits tended to be short and to the point, and they didn’t talk on the phone much; they both preferred to text. Maybe he should do this more often, Peter thought –– just stay over at the tower and have breakfast with Tony. It’d probably improve things with Morgan, too. There really wasn’t any reason not to; he’d just... gotten out of the habit. 

He’d been reluctant about this whole thing at first, partly because it had felt invasive. But it wasn’t just that; it was that his life was a house of cards that the slightest breeze would blow right over. But that house of cards was already kind of crappy. Maybe having to start fresh wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. 

***

Peter looked less tired than he had the day before, Antoni decided when he emerged from the private elevator in the lobby of Stark Tower. A little less frayed around the edges. 

“Good morning!” Antoni said cheerfully. He offered him the second cup of coffee in his hands. “Half-caff, oatmilk, four sugars.”

Peter’s eyebrows went up. “How did you know?” 

“I always ask for our heroes’ coffee preferences,” Antoni said. “Though in this case, all I had to do was tell the barista at the coffee bar in the lobby here that it was for you, and she knew exactly what to make.”

“Oh yeah, makes sense. Thanks.”

“Sure. Come on. We’ve got a bit of a walk.” 

It was a cool spring morning, perfect for a ten block walk to their destination. Peter had probably already guessed what they would be doing, but he didn’t ask about it. Some people wanted to know all the details ahead of time, Antoni had learned over the years, while others were content to be surprised. 

They finally fetched up in front of an old school Italian restaurant in Hell’s Kitchen. “Have you ever been here?” Antoni asked, holding the door open. 

“No, but I’ve been to lots of places like it,” Peter said. Antoni followed him inside, and the smell of marinara, Italian sausage, basil, and spices hit him immediately. 

“The owner’s a friend of mine. She agreed to let us use the kitchen.”

“That’s cool –– wait, what? May’s here?” Peter demanded, head turning toward the kitchen. 

Peter’s aunt _was_ here, but how he knew that, Antoni had no idea. Crazy spider hearing, maybe? He hadn’t heard a thing. 

Peter was already shoving the doors to the kitchen open. “May?”

“Hi, sweetie!” May Parker said. Antoni made sure the door didn’t swing shut in the camera crew’s face; one of them was inside with Peter’s aunt and Antoni’s friend Carla, but the other two were right behind them. 

May gave Peter a big hug, which he returned with interest. “I didn’t know you were gonna be here,” Peter said.

“I hope you don’t mind. When Antoni called and asked me for the recipe for Ben’s lasagna, I decided to crash your party.”

“Of course I don’t mind. Is that what we’re making?” Peter said, turning to look at Antoni.

“That’s the idea. Peter, this is my friend Carla. She owns the restaurant.”

Peter shook her hand. “It’s great to meet you. Thanks for letting us use the kitchen here.”

“My pleasure. My sons are your biggest fans.”

Peter’s smile grew a little more genuine. “How old are they?”

“Four and six. I don’t suppose I could get an autograph?”

“Sure,” Peter said. 

“Thanks. I’ll see if I can scare up a picture of them as Spiderman and Iron Man from last Halloween for you to sign. Let me know if you need anything,” she added to Antoni, and left them alone in the kitchen with the camera crew. 

“So you don’t hate that side of being famous,” Antoni said to Peter. 

“What?”

“You got all happy when she asked you for an autograph for her kids.”

“Oh,” Peter said. “No, that’s cool. I love kids. And Halloween is like my favorite day of the year. I love seeing all the kids dressed up as Spiderman.”

“He trended on Twitter last year, he took so many photos with all the little Spider-babies,” May put in. 

Antoni laughed. “That’s adorable. Okay, I’ve got your uncle’s recipe here.” He pulled out a copy of the handwritten recipe May had scanned in and sent to him. “Now the key to a good lasagna is the type of meat that you use and getting your sauce right. It looks like Ben’s recipe calls for a mix of sweet Italian sausage and ground beef. So, May, why don’t you start combining those, and Peter, I’m going to ask you to chop the garlic and onions...”

The three of them started working. Peter was a lot more competent in the kitchen than Antoni had expected, based on the state of his fridge. He knew without Antoni having to tell him to use the flat of a knife to smash a clove of garlic so it was easier to peel. 

“So,” Antoni said, once the onions and garlic were sizzling in the pan, “tell me about Ben. Did he make this a lot?”

“Not really,” May said, stirring the meat around in another pan as it browned. She seemed a lot less comfortable in the kitchen than Peter, which jived with what Peter had said the day before. “Maybe a few times a year –– for my birthday and then usually on Christmas. And in between, if he had a day off and felt like it.”

“Ben and I made it together a few times,” Peter said. “Especially for your birthday.”

“Lasagna and tiramisu,” May said, a little wistfully. “Every year.”

“Ooh, no one told me about the tiramisu,” Antoni said. “Did he make that himself, too?”

“He did. He was a really good cook.”

“I’m sorry I never made it for you,” Peter said, sounding stricken. “I should have –– after he died, I should’ve ––”

“Oh honey, no –– it’s so much work ––”

Peter shook his head. “No, but I should have –– I was just so wrapped up in Spiderman and my own stuff, it never even occurred to me.”

“It’s okay, sweetie,” May said, turning away from the stove to give him a hug. Antoni subtly rescued the meat, turning the heat down under it. “It really is. And now we’ve got new traditions for my birthday. But I’m glad we’re doing this now.”

“It’s okay if traditions change, you know,” Antoni said. “Sometimes it takes time to come back to something after you’ve lost someone. Maybe a new tradition can be the two of you making this together for Ben.”

“I like that idea,” May said. 

“Me too,” Peter agreed. Antoni handed him a can of crushed tomatoes, and he dumped them into the pan with the garlic and onions. “But I’m still sorry. I wasn’t thinking very clearly back then.”

“Neither of us was, baby,” she said. “That was a hard time. But we got through it, didn’t we?”

Peter nodded, wordlessly. He looked a little choked up. Antoni and May carried the conversation between them for a minute or two, and by the time the sauce was done, he seemed to have recovered. 

Ben’s recipe called for par-boiling the noodles, but Antoni skipped that step in favor of noodles that would cook in the lasagna itself. Together, the three of them layered the meat, the sauce, the noodles and the cheese in a huge casserole dish. May and Peter traded stories about cooking misadventures past, including the time Peter and Ben had tried making fresh pasta and ended up in a flour fight. May said she hadn’t found it all that funny at the time, but she laughed now, retelling the story. 

It was a little after noon when the lasagna went in the oven. It would take almost an hour, so in the meantime, they went out to the bar. They found Karamo sitting there already, drinking a beer and chatting with the bartender while she prepped garnishes. The restaurant wasn’t open, but she got them all beers anyway. 

“Hope you don’t mind. I’m supposed to deliver you to your next appointment this afternoon, and I heard there was going to be a kickass lasagna,” Karamo said to Peter. “But before that, I wanted to borrow your aunt for a bit.”

“Oh yeah, sure,” Peter said. May kissed Peter on the cheek, and then she and Karamo left the restaurant. One of the crew members went with them, while the other two stayed with Antoni and Peter. Peter watched them go, frowning a little.

“So what do you think?” Antoni asked him. “Do you think lasagna is something you and your aunt could make together sometimes?”

“Yeah,” Peter said, drawing patterns in the condensation on his beer glass. “I think so.” He was quiet for a moment, then drew a quick breath. “I missed her birthday last year.”

Antoni winced. “Ouch. Why?”

“Why do you think?” Peter said with a shrug. “Spiderman stuff. She wasn’t even mad about it. She said she understood, even though I could tell she was disappointed. I still felt like shit about it, though.”

Antoni could imagine. “How long has May known about you?”

“Almost since the beginning. There was about a year when she didn’t, but I have a hard time keeping things from her. Well.” Peter hesitated. “I used to, anyway. She’s always been great, but I’ve stopped telling her things because I know how much she worries. Tony, too.”

“They’re your parents in all the ways that matter, right? It’s their job to worry.”

“I know, but...” Peter made a face. “I have enough to think about without worrying about them worrying about me.”

“You think you’re protecting her by not telling her things?”

“Yeah, kind of.”

“Would she agree with that?”

Peter snorted. “No. She’d rather I forget her birthday for the rest of her life than keep things from her.” He shook his head. “I get what you’re saying. Just sometimes it seems easier to not say anything than have to deal with the fallout.”

“Easier in the short-term, maybe,” Antoni said. “Just like it’s easier in the short-term to keep letting Spiderman drown out everything else in your life. But in the long-term, I think we both know how that kind of secrecy affects our relationships with other people.”

“Some things aren’t their business, though.”

Antoni shrugged. “Sure. Part of growing up is learning how to have healthy boundaries with your family. But is it really that they’re super nosy?”

“No,” Peter admitted. “At least not in a bad way.”

Antoni let the silence stretch for a beat or two. “I don’t have a relationship with my mom,” he finally said. “You might know that already from having watched the show. I think talking with parents can be hard for a lot of reasons, and your reasons are different from mine. But you have two people who love you, and who seem to accept you for who you are. That’s rarer than you might realize.”

Peter nodded. His eyes were a little bright. “No, you’re right. I think I used to be more open with both of them when I was younger. But I went away for college, and my aunt got remarried, and... and then I went through a rough patch when I finally revealed my identity. I think... I think it was that stuff that I didn’t want them to see. More than the Spiderman stuff.”

“Yeah,” Antoni said. “That makes sense.”

Peter nodded. He took a sip of his beer, and Antoni followed suit. 

“Thank you,” Peter said at a moment. 

Antoni grinned at him. “No problem. It’s literally what we’re here for.”

***

Karamo and May were gone about half an hour, which, truthfully, made Peter nervous. He knew that Karamo was asking her about him, and the idea made his palms sweat. May would never hurt him, but tell that to his anxiety. 

It had felt surprisingly good to talk to Antoni, though. Once they got through the emotional stuff, he was easy to chat with. The camera crew faded into the background, and Peter relaxed. Carla came out of her office with the photo for him to sign. Peter laughed when he saw her tiny four-year-old dressed up as Iron Man, standing next to her much taller six-year-old, dressed up as Spiderman. 

“You know, Tony and I are actually the same height,” Peter said as he signed it. “But he’s like four or five inches taller in the suit. I swear he did it on purpose. Pepper _towers_ over him in heels, they’re always arranging the photos so it’s not obvious.”

“That’s hilarious,” Antoni said, grinning. 

“I’d think that once you’ve saved the universe, you wouldn’t worry about those sorts of things,” Carla remarked.

“He doesn’t, really,” Peter said with a shrug. “But the PR folks do. Seems kind of weird, now that I’m thinking about it. Like, who cares who’s taller?”

“Lots of men care,” Carla said with a resigned sigh. “Don’t be one of them.”

“Good advice,” Antoni said, nodding sagely. 

Eventually, Karamo and May returned, and not long afterward, the lasagna came out of the oven. It didn't taste quite like Uncle Ben’s, if Peter was totally honest, but it was close. Closer than anything had tasted in the last ten years. 

_Ten years._ Fifteen, actually, but Peter hadn’t been here for five of them and neither had May, so they didn’t count. It was hard to believe that he had been gone so long, but then again, Peter thought with a pang, it also wasn’t. 

Ben would have liked this, Peter reflected. He’d have worried about Peter just like Tony and May did, and he’d have liked the idea of Peter getting some help for his... everything. Sometimes Peter thought about the last words Ben had ever said to him –– _With great power comes great responsibility_ –– and wondered if he’d known how much those words would affect the rest of Peter’s life. Whether he would have said them at all if he had. 

Maybe not, Peter thought. But he would never know for sure. 

After they’d eaten, it was time for Karamo to take him to meet up with Tan. May hugged him good-bye extra hard. “Love you, baby,” she whispered. “I’m so proud of you for doing this.”

Peter ducked his head. “Thanks. Love you, too.”

“Your aunt’s amazing,” Karamo said, once they were in the car. “You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I do,” Peter said with a grin. “Do I want to know what the two of you talked about?”

“Nothing bad, I promise,” Karamo said. “I just asked her what she hoped you’d get out of this. And I _might_ have asked her about MJ.”

Peter frowned. “I never talked to her about what happened with MJ.”

“Yeah, that’s what she said. Why not?”

“Because I knew what she’d say.” 

“Which is?”

“That I’m an idiot,” Peter said, turning his head to look out the window. “That MJ was right. That I couldn’t expect her to sit around, waiting for me to show up when I felt like it.”

Karamo hummed. “Do you think that’s a fair description?”

Peter sighed. “I don’t know. I never feel like I have a choice. I _have_ to be Spiderman, because if I’m not Spiderman, people get hurt. Like last night –– you told me to go straight to the Tower and have dinner with Tony and Pepper and Morgan, but instead I decided to patrol on the way there. I stopped a mugging, but then I was super late for dinner, and Morgan was pissed at me. But what choice did I have?”

“You did have a choice, though,” Karamo pointed out. “You chose to patrol. You prioritized that over getting to dinner on time.”

Peter raised his eyebrows. “You don’t think that was the right thing to do?”

“It’s not really my job to decide that for you,” Karamo said, glancing over briefly. “I’m just pointing out that you say you don’t feel like you have a choice, but you _do_ have a choice. You’ve just gotten into the habit of always making the _same_ choice. I don’t think there’s a person who loves you who would say you should stop being Spiderman. But I do think that some of them would like to know that you’re going to show up when you say you will. Showing up shows that you care.”

“Yeah, I’m figuring that out.” Peter rubbed his forehead. “Tony says that each time I don’t show or show up hours late, it compounds on itself. He never gets mad at me, even though sometimes I think it hurts him. May never gets mad at me, either. But Morgan and MJ... it’s already cost me my relationship with MJ, and I think it might cost me my relationship with Morgan if I don’t get my shit together.”

“Okay. So, now, I have a question for you. Would you be okay with me reaching out to MJ?”

“Oh,” Peter said, glancing over at him in surprise. “Uh. I guess? She might not want to be on camera.”

“That’s okay,” Karamo said. “We’ll work something out.”

“She might also tell you that _Queer Eye_ encourages consumerism in the guise of self-care,” Peter added, lips quirking. 

Karamo laughed. “You know, it’s a fair critique. Now, here’s another question: Do you miss her?”

Peter let out a long breath. “Yes. Always. I just... I’m not sure that I can be what she needs me to be.”

“All I’m talking about is a conversation,” Karamo said. “Just re-opening the lines of communication, if you’re both interested.”

Peter blew out a long breath. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, I’m interested.” He missed MJ every day, but he’d gotten used to the ache of it. He’d resigned himself to the idea of being alone, because if MJ –– who had known him for years and always been his friend even when they weren’t together –– couldn’t deal with his shit, then no one could. He’d chalked it up to one more thing he’d lost to Spiderman and tried to move on. 

But... maybe this wasn’t the only way of doing things. Maybe he could actually live his life differently. Maybe he even wanted to. 

***

Tan did not consider himself someone who cared that much about celebrity as a concept. Since _Queer Eye_ had become a cultural phenomenon, he’d met a lot of celebrities and dressed more than a few of them. 

But they were just garden variety celebrities next to Tony Stark. Tony Stark had snapped his fingers to save the universe. Tan would have been lying if he’d said that meeting Tony Stark –– who had been a style icon _before_ all that happened and now rocked a red and gold vibranium arm –– wasn’t a little... dazzling. 

He covered well enough, he hoped. Tony was gracious about it, at least, and the two of them had clothes and fashion in common.

“So here’s the thing,” Tony said. He’d kept his blue Tom Ford sunglasses on even once they’d entered the store. “The kid hates it when I spend money on him. I can give him all the fancy tech I want for Spiderman, but he freaks out if I give him anything for himself that he knows costs more than about $200. I’ve been trying to respect his independence, but he’s still dressing like he did his freshman year in college, which is basically how he dressed in high school.”

“I did notice that when I went through his wardrobe,” Tan said. “Lots of science t-shirts.”

“And hey, I love a good t-shirt,” Tony said, pushing back his impeccably tailored suit jacket to reveal the AC/DC shirt he wore underneath. “The t-shirts aren’t the problem.”

“I completely agree. I actually have a plan for that,” Tan said. “And I intend to keep it within a budget that he’ll be able to afford for himself. And if he still won’t shop, he at least shouldn’t freak out if you buy things for his birthday or Christmas.”

“Good,” Tony said. “Oh, and for the love of Thor ––”

“I will get him some new shoes.” Tan had been horrified to find a collection of increasingly ratty trainers in Peter’s closet. It looked as though Peter only bought a new pair every couple of years, and for some inexplicable reason, never threw any of his old ones away. 

“And burn the old ones,” Tony said flatly.

Tan held his hand up. “You have my word.” 

The door to the shop opened and Peter entered, right on time. “Tan?” he called. “Oh wow, Tony!”

“Hey kid.” Tony hugged him, ruffling Peter’s hair fondly. Peter squirmed away, flattening his curls again with a huff. 

“What are you doing here?” Peter asked him. 

“Something I’ve been wanting to do for years that you never let me do, makeover shows aside. How was your morning?”

“It was great,” Peter said, breaking into a genuine grin. It was the first time Tan thought he’d ever seen Peter smile where it wasn’t tentative in some way. “May surprised me, and Antoni helped us make Ben’s lasagna.”

“Oh God, did everyone survive?”

“Yeah, I think Antoni’s abilities counterbalanced May’s. Nothing blew up or caught fire, and everything ended up edible. There might even be leftovers at the party.”

“I look forward to it.” Tony looped his arm around Peter’s shoulders and turned him so he was facing Tan. “So, Tan and I have been having a little chat about your wardrobe.”

Peter groaned, dropping his head to Tony’s shoulder. “I don’t like the part of this where everyone is talking about me _all the time_.”

“Too bad, kiddo. But now that you’re here, I’m going to let the expert work. Either of you want anything? An espresso? I was going to duck next door to the coffee shop.”

“An espresso sounds lovely,” Tan said. “Thank you, Tony.”

“An iced tea,” Peter said. “Thanks.”

“Great. What about you all?” Tony asked, turning to the camera crew. “I’m taking orders.”

A couple of crew members asked for coffee. Tony didn’t bother to write anything down, but Tan had no doubt that he would remember exactly what each of them had asked for. He left the shop, and Tan turned his attention to Peter. 

“So, how are we feeling today?” Tan asked. 

Peter shrugged. “Nervous, I guess. I think this is the part I’m... not dreading, exactly. It’s just... I don’t know. Cooking is fun, and I’m looking forward to having a nicer place to live, and I don’t know what Jonathan is going to do to me tomorrow, but it seems easier than this, somehow.”

“A lot of people don’t like shopping,” Tan conceded. “But I hope that this will be relaxing and enjoyable. I might ask you to try on something you’re doubtful about, but the point is not just for you to look good, but also for you to _feel_ good, all right? If you don’t like something, say so, and we’ll try something else.”

Peter exhaled, then nodded. 

“All right. I brought with me a few of your science t-shirts in different colors,” Tan said, gesturing to where he’d laid them out over a couple of chairs. “I noticed that you had a lot of dark blues, dark greens, and dark reds, so that’s the palette we’ll be working with. Does that sound okay so far?” 

Peter nodded. 

“Okay, then what I’d like to try is a t-shirt under a contrasting button down, with a pair of pants that aren’t jeans. I’ve got a couple things already in the dressing room for you. Here, take this blue t-shirt” –– Tan handed him a shirt that said “Starfleet Academy New Recruit” –– “and I want you to try on the green button down I have in there, with the brown pants and the brown shoes.”

Peter looked about as enthusiastic as he might if he were going to his execution, but he took the t-shirt and went into the dressing room. Tan perched on the edge of one of the chairs to wait. 

Tony returned before Peter emerged, with everyone’s coffees in a cardboard tray. “How are we doing?” he asked, as he handed Tan his espresso. He moved the t-shirts on the other chair over and sat down, crossing one leg over the other. 

“First outfit,” Tan said, nodding toward the fitting room. “How’re you doing, Peter?” he called, standing. 

“I’m ready, I guess.” Peter opened the dressing room door and came out. 

The forest green button down fit him really well, and it left the t-shirt’s logo peeking out from beneath it. The trousers were a little long and would need to be altered, but they fit him much better than his jeans had. The shoes were quite simply a massive improvement. They weren’t too formal –– in fact, they were basically a dressed-up sneaker –– but they didn’t look like they were about to spontaneously dissolve on Peter’s feet. 

“Come over here,” Tan said, drawing Peter gently over to the mirror. “Now, you see how well this shirt fits you? The length is right, the sleeves can be worn long or rolled up, and you can just see the t-shirt underneath. How do you feel in these clothes?”

“Better than I thought I would,” Peter admitted. “And I think I look... I don’t know, a little older?”

“You look your age, instead of like a teenager,” Tan agreed. “The pants are a little long, but we can fix that. Now, I want to show you a trick. Let’s say you’re wearing this to work in the lab all morning, but in the afternoon, you have a meeting with some investors. What you do is button it up...” Tan stood in front of Peter, blocking the mirror, and buttoned up the shirt, leaving the top two buttons open. He stepped away and turned to face the mirror with Peter. “And now you can’t even see the t-shirt. You can tuck in the front of your shirt and add a belt really easily, just to dress it up a little.”

“French tuck, right?” Peter asked with half a smile. 

“Exactly.” 

Peter tucked in the front of the shirt. Tan handed him a belt, and he looped it through the belt loops and buckled it. Then he stared at himself in the mirror. 

“What do you think?” Tan asked. 

“I like it,” Peter said slowly. “I still feel like me, but... I don’t know, it’s kind of like there are layers of me. Like the Star Trek shirt is the first layer of me, and the button down is the second layer. But it’s not... it’s not a disguise. I think I was worried I’d feel like I was hiding something again. But I don’t.”

Tan squeezed his shoulder. “Good. Clothes shouldn’t feel like a costume. They should feel like an expression of who we are. We all have different facets to our personalities, so it makes sense that there would be different facets to our wardrobes.”

Peter nodded. “Yeah. I like that.” 

“Ready for the next outfit?” 

“Sure,” Peter said. “Bring it on.”

The fittings always took much longer than it seemed on TV, but Peter was pretty easy, as clients went, and Tan had known that he would need to stay fairly basic. He was building Peter a wardrobe of interchangeable pieces he could swap out at will. So they tried lighter button downs and darker button downs, casual jackets he could just throw over a t-shirt on a day off, dark wash jeans and brown pants, and a couple different types of shoes, including a pair of boots. The longer it went on, the more relaxed Peter seemed to get. 

To Tan’s surprise, Tony didn’t intervene much. He sat back and only offered an opinion when Peter asked him. Tan had expected him to be a lot more hands-on and had braced himself to have to ask him to take a step back. But he never had to. 

“There is one more thing I’d like you to have in your wardrobe,” Tan said, once they had amassed an impressive pile of button-down shirts, trousers, and even a tie or two that Peter had picked out himself. “And that is a suit.”

Peter immediately made a face. “Do I have to?”

Tan held his hands out. “‘Have to’ is relative, but the one in your wardrobe is too small for you. You’ve grown a lot since you bought it.”

“Yeah, it’s the one I wore to prom.”

Tan blinked. “Well, no wonder it’s too short for you. Can you even get the jacket on?”

“Not really. It doesn’t fit around my shoulders.”

“Right. So we’re going to get you a new one. I can pick something out, but I’d like your input. Is there anything in particular you like?”

Peter bit his lip and cast a helpless look at Tony. 

“Pinstripes,” Tony said, without a moment of hesitation. “Navy. With a red tie.”

Tan looked to Peter for confirmation. Peter grimaced. “Won’t I look, I don’t know, like I’m trying too hard?” 

“No.” Tony stood up. “The pinstripes will make you look taller, and on your frame, a slim-cut pinstripe suit will be absolutely killer.” 

“He’s right,” Tan said.

Peter shrugged. “All right, let’s just do it then. I trust you guys.” 

Within minutes, the store clerk who’d been discreetly helping them brought the suit jacket and slacks, along with a white shirt. Tony picked out the dark red tie, which had a subtle pattern to it. Tan hoped that Peter didn’t look at the price tag; everything else they’d chosen was pretty affordable, but the suit was more expensive. It was off-the-rack and pretty solidly mid-range, but “mid-range” for a suit was still more money than Peter had likely spent on clothes in the last three years.

Peter took the clothes into the dressing room looking especially trepidatious. While they waited, Tony caught Tan’s eye and shook his head. “You have no idea how long I’ve been wanting to do this. Our last Maria Stark Foundation Gala, he came in something rented. _Rented_. I tried to hide my horror ––”

“No, you didn’t,” Peter called from inside the dressing room. 

“Okay, no, I didn’t,” Tony admitted. 

Tan couldn’t help smiling at the obvious affection between them. As much as Peter had been trying to keep people at arm’s length, he clearly hadn’t succeeded with Tony. 

“Tan, can you come help me like... straighten all this out?” Peter asked. 

“Of course,” Tan said, and ducked into the fitting room. 

Peter had managed to get most of the suit on, but he was struggling a bit with the tie. Tan did it for him, then fixed his cuffs and made sure the lapels were lying flat. He buttoned the top button of the jacket, smoothed the shoulders, and smiled at Peter. “You can wear black or brown shoes with navy. Brown is more casual, but you’d be likely to wear this to something more formal, so put on the black for now.”

Peter sat down to put the shoes on. Tan stood blocking the mirror, wanting him to get the full effect when they went out. 

They left the dressing room. Tony gave a low whistle. “Looking good, Pete. I was completely right about the pinstripes.”

Peter gave him a dry look. “Congratulations.” He turned to face the mirror, and his jaw dropped a little. “Holy shit.”

“A couple of finishing touches,” Tony said, stepping forward. Tan seamlessly swapped places with him and dropped back, letting Tony take over. “First, the pocket square.” He deftly tucked it into the pocket of Peter’s jacket, leaving just the right amount of it poking out. “Second... okay, just trust me on this, Pete.” 

He produced a fedora from behind his back and put it on Peter’s head. Then he stepped to the side so that Peter could see himself again. He stood at Peter’s back and put a hand on either shoulder. 

For Tan personally, the fedora was a bit much, especially since Peter’s fashion sense had heretofore involved science puns and jeans that didn’t quite fit him. But he couldn't deny that Peter looked good in it. He had the cheekbones to pull it off. But he had to wear the hat, rather than letting the hat wear him, or it would seem cheesy and obvious. 

Peter stared at himself in the mirror. “What do you see, Pete?” Tony asked.

“I’m... I didn’t think...” Peter blinked rapidly. “I look _cool_.”

Tony laughed a little. “You do look cool. You _are_ cool. But I’ll tell you what I see. I see the future CEO of Stark Industries.”

“I... yeah.” Peter sounded almost dazed. “I do, too. You’ve always said that, and I never... I’ve never really believed you before.”

Tony squeezed Peter’s shoulders. “Do you believe it now?”

Peter nodded. “I think I do. I feel... I don’t know. Confident.”

“It’s amazing what a good suit can do for our confidence,” Tan said from the sidelines. “I don’t know if you realize this, Peter, but your shoulders have gone back. Your chin has gone up. You _look_ more confident. And it’s not the suit itself, but the way the suit makes you feel.”

“It almost makes me feel the way the Spiderman suit does,” Peter said, glancing over at him. “Like I can do anything. I’ve never felt that way before as just plain old Peter Parker.”

Tan could not let that lie. “Peter, there’s nothing plain about you. Not in the Spider suit, nor in this suit, nor in a science pun t-shirt. You’re extraordinary no matter what you’re wearing.”

“He’s right,” Tony said, sounding a little hoarse. “You’re amazing, kid.” He took a deep breath and dropped his arms. “So I know the deal with the clothes is that the show pays for them. But I’d like to buy the suit, Pete. If you’ll let me.”

Peter’s eyes looked brighter than usual. “Yeah, okay. Thank you.”

“It’s my honor, kid,” Tony said. “Truly.”

Tan smiled to himself, turning away to give the two of them a little more privacy. He still had a lot to do, but he felt like the most important part of his work here was done. 

***

Peter was utterly exhausted by the time they left the store, leaving Tan behind to make arrangements to have everything altered and sent to Peter’s apartment. It was after five by then, and Peter felt like he’d been wrung out like a wet washcloth and left to dry. 

“So, what’s the plan, kid?” Tony asked as they waited for his driver to bring the car. “Are you coming back with me, or do you want to try and squeeze in a patrol before dinner?”

Peter hesitated. Normally, the answer would have been obvious. He couldn’t remember the last time he hadn’t patrolled, given the opportunity. But he was tired. And Tony, though he was trying to look neutral, was obviously hoping that Peter would come back to the tower with him. 

“Nah, I’m okay. I’ll come back with you,” he clarified, when Tony looked confused. 

“Really?” Tony said incredulously. “I mean –– sure, sounds good. Whatever you want.”

Peter had to laugh. “It’s okay, Tony. You don’t don’t have to pretend to be chill about this.”

“Oh good. In that case, hurray! I am thrilled and relieved that you’re coming home with me, because I can’t handle my kids fighting with each other. And as a reward, I’ll make carbonara.”

“I never say no to that,” Peter said. The car pulled up and he and Tony slid into the back seat. “Maybe we can play a board game afterward? Or have family movie night?”

“I think that can be arranged.” Tony took his sunglasses off and slipped them into his pocket. “How’re you feeling about this so far? I know you weren’t the biggest fan of the idea.”

“It’s actually been more fun than I thought it would be,” Peter admitted. “And... I don’t know. Karamo said something in the car to me earlier, that I have choices, even when I don’t realize it, but I’ve gotten in the habit of always making the same choice.”

Tony hummed thoughtfully. “So is that what you’re doing tonight? Making a different choice?”

“Yeah,” Peter said, smiling at him. 

Morgan and Pepper were both home when they got there. Pepper was on a conference call, but Morgan was in the living room, doing some sort of crazy pilates routine her gymnastic coach had probably given her. The new _Unsolved Mysteries_ was on in the background. Tony called hello to her before heading into the kitchen to get the carbonara started. 

Peter hesitated, then went into the living room. “Hi Mo,” he said, dropping down to sit cross-legged beside her. 

“Hi,” she said shortly. She was holding a plank position on her elbows, letting her head hang down so her hair hid her face. 

“So, uh. I’m sorry about last night,” Peter said. Mo didn't answer. “I know I haven’t been super reliable lately. I know I haven’t been there. I was really mad at myself for missing your birthday and your last meet. There were reasons, but those reasons might not’ve been as good as I thought they were.”

Mo grunted. 

“What?” Peter said. 

“I got thirty more seconds on this plank, dumbass,” Morgan managed. 

“Oh, right!” Peter said. “Sorry.” He sat with his mouth shut until Morgan collapsed onto her stomach. 

“Broke my record by five seconds,” she said, rolling onto her back. 

“Good job,” Peter said, offering her a high five. 

She gave it to him, then lay, looking up at him, hands resting on her stomach. “I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have thrown a tantrum. I just miss your stupid face, that’s all. When we moved down to the city, I thought we’d get to hang out all the time, but we don’t even hang out as much as we did before.”

Reflexively, Peter wanted to say that that wasn’t true. He was over at the tower a couple times a week to work with Tony in the lab and make repairs to the suit. But he only stayed for dinner occasionally, and he almost never spent the night. Before, when he’d had to make a three hour trek to the lake house to see Tony and Pepper and Morgan, he’d always stayed for a few days, and those visits had always been Spiderman-free. 

But it was different now. It was harder to make time, because visiting the tower wasn’t a built-in break from his life in the city.

“You’re right,” Peter said. 

She blinked at him. “I’m sorry, what?”

“You’re right. I’ve really sucked at making time for you. I can’t promise I’ll never flake, because sometimes there really is an emergency, but I can promise that I’m going to try and be better.”

She sat up. “Seriously? Don’t say it if you don’t mean it, Peter. Please.”

“I do mean it,” Peter said. “I love you three thousand, Mo.”

“Dork,” she said, kicking at him with her foot.

Peter just kept looking at her expectantly. 

“I love you, too, I guess,” she said, with a roll of her eyes. She was still twelve for three more months, but at that moment, Peter felt her teenage years bearing down on all of them. 

He was struck by the realization that soon she might not _want_ to hang out with him as much. She was already busy, with school and gymnastics and friends, and soon there would be other distractions, and their roles might be reversed. When that happened, he might look back at the year and a half he had wasted, wishing he hadn’t spent that time too wrapped up in his own shit to pay attention. 

“You’re staying over again tonight, right?” Morgan said, interrupting his thoughts. 

“That’s the plan.”

“Awesome.” She pushed herself to her feet. “I’m gonna go take a quick shower before dinner.”

Peter stayed where he was until she’d gone, and then he got up and went into the kitchen. Tony was frying pancetta. Peter filled a glass of water and drank it. 

“You okay, kid?” Tony asked after a moment. “It sounded like Morgan forgave you.”

“Yeah, it’s just...” Peter shook his head. “I don’t know. I thought she’d be a kid forever. But she won’t be, will she? She’s almost the same age now as I was when I got bit.”

“Time marches on,” Tony agreed. “Despite my best efforts to figure out how to freeze it.”

Peter looked at Tony. The lines at the corners of his eyes were deeper. He’d stopped dyeing his hair years ago, and it had gone almost completely silver, only a little bit of black still peppered through. He would be sixty in May. 

How much time did they have left? Peter wondered. Fifteen years? Twenty? He used to think about Tony’s mortality a lot, especially after the snap, but somewhere along the way, he’d started taking it for granted. The therapist he’d seen when he was younger probably would’ve said it was a good thing he wasn’t constantly thinking that his last remaining father figure might die at any moment, but somehow Peter had gotten complacent. 

“Peter?” Tony said, frowning at him. 

Peter swallowed. “You ever get hit over the head by the knowledge that life is fleeting?”

“Probably more than most. Are you okay?” 

“Yeah. I’m gonna be around a lot more,” Peter declared, feeling determined. “I swear, Tony.”

Tony’s eyes softened in understanding. “I’d really like that, Pete. And I know Morgan and Pepper would, too. But I’m not going anywhere anytime soon. My heart’s still beating strong, despite everything.”

“Good,” Peter said, and reached out to hug Tony. “Good.”

Tony turned and kissed the top of Peter’s head. “Hey, why don’t you grate some cheese for me? I put it out on the counter.”

A couple of minutes later, Pepper came out of her office. She hugged Peter and started making a salad for them to have with the carbonara. For her part, Morgan managed to time it perfectly, emerging from her room just as dinner was ready. 

Peter felt something unwind within him as the four of them sat around the table, listening to Morgan talk about her morning gymnastics practice. He’d almost forgotten what it felt like to just be with people he trusted, who knew him and loved him, without any kind of agenda or pretense. By the time they finished dinner and decamped to the living room for a movie, he was more relaxed than he could remember feeling in ages. 

They put on _The Princess Bride_ , a family favorite none of them ever objected to. Morgan sat on the floor between Pepper and Tony. Her hair was loose and still damp, and Pepper started French braiding it, so it would be wavy in the morning. Peter claimed the spot between Tony and the arm of the sofa. Tony put his arm around Peter’s shoulders, and Peter curled in toward him the way he used to when he was younger, in those weeks and months after the snap, when it had seemed like a miracle that they had both survived. Back then, Tony had made him feel safe when almost nothing else could. 

Buttercup had just married Prince Humperdink when Peter’s phone buzzed. He fished it out of his pocket and glanced at it. 

Ned had texted, _Hey how’s it going with the Fab 5? Is it awesome? Tell me it’s awesome._

Peter grinned to himself. Some things never changed. Ned’s unabashed enthusiasm was one of them. _It’s awesome but also kind of hard. Worth it, tho._ He paused, wondering how much more he should say. _I’ve been kind of a sucky friend the last couple of years_ , he finally added. _But you’ve never given up on me. So... thanks. You’re always my guy in the chair._

 _Whoa_ , Ned replied. _Thanks, dude._

_You’re coming to the party on Saturday, right?_

_Yep, I’ll be there. Have fun! Say hi to Jonathan Van Ness for me! Tell him I love him!_

Peter grinned. “Ned,” he said, when Tony raised an eyebrow at him.

“Ah,” Tony said. His arm tightened around Peter’s shoulders. Peter took the hint and slid his phone back into his pocket.

He couldn’t help worrying for Queens, couldn’t help thinking about what might be happening because he wasn’t there to stop it. But even so... this felt like the right choice. Maybe not a choice he could make all of the time, but definitely one that he could make more of the time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I confess that the scene with Peter, Tan, and Tony might be one of my favorite scenes in this whole fic. For some reason, Tan and Tony were a blast to write together. :-D


	3. DAY THREE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to Fuzzyboo again for the beta!

The lobby of Stark Tower was maybe not _the_ fanciest place Jonathan had ever been, but it had to be in the top five. The whole thing was very minimalist –– clean lines, glass, polished white marble. And the coffee from the coffee bar in the lobby –– which offered pour-over, an espresso tasting, and house-made flavored kombucha –– was mind-blowing. 

“Hey,” Peter greeted him when he emerged from the elevator into the lobby.

“Good morning!” Jonathan said. “Oh my God, this coffee. Have you had this coffee?” 

Peter grinned. “A few times, yeah. Hi Tamra,” he added to the woman behind the counter. 

“Hi Peter, your usual?”

“Yes, please.”

“Does it make it impossible to drink coffee anywhere else?” Jonathan asked. “Because I think it may have ruined me.”

“It does, kind of,” Peter admitted. Tamra slid his drink across the counter to him. “Thanks,” he said, and stuffed a couple dollars into the tip jar. “But I don’t drink coffee at home. It makes me jittery if I have it too often. Hence the half-caff.” 

“You and me both, sister,” Jonathan said. “Now let’s go, we’ve got a hot date with a salon chair.”

“Oh, before I forget,” Peter said, once they were in the SUV, heading downtown toward the salon in the West Village, “my friend Ned said to say hi. And also that he loves you.”

“Aww, cute,” Jonathan said. Once upon a time, he would’ve found it weird for a total stranger to say he loved him, but these days, as long as it didn’t cross into stalker territory, he just thought it was nice. “Tell me about him.”

Peter shrugged. “We’ve been friends since like fifth grade. He was the first person who ever found out I was Spiderman.”

“Can I just say, it is _insane_ that you started the superhero gig when you were _fifteen_. Like, you couldn’t even vote yet and you were out there saving lives and living your truth.” 

Peter shrugged. “I think anyone would’ve, if they’d been the one to get end up with powers.”

“Okay, _no_ ,” Jonathan said, pointing a finger at him in emphasis. “That definitely is not true. But I love that you think it is.”

They pulled up in front of the salon and climbed out. Jonathan ushered Peter inside. “So, have you ever been in a place like this?” he asked. 

“Once. I get my hair cut on the cheap, but when I turned twenty-one, Tony treated me to a super expensive haircut and shave. It was nice, but I haven’t done it since.” 

“Got it. Well, you are in for a treat.” 

It was early still, and the salon wasn’t open yet, so they were the only ones there. Jonathan got Peter seated at his station and stood behind him, hands on his shoulders. “So, here are my thoughts. You don’t have crazy-hair-and-beard Sasquatch-ness happening, so I’m just going to give you a trim and we’ll talk about how to really rock those curls of yours. Then, since we’ve got a little extra time, I was thinking I should introduce you to the wonder that is a mani-pedi. Sound good?”

“Yeah, sounds great,” Peter said, grinning. 

“Awesome! Let’s wash your hair, then.”

Jonathan took his time washing Peter’s hair. He’d noticed on the first day that Peter had kind of relaxed when he’d been playing with his hair in the car, and he didn’t seem like someone who relaxed very often. Jonathan didn’t try to talk to him, just let him zone out in the chair. 

Finally, after two rounds of conditioning and a nice scalp massage, Jonathan prodded him into sitting up. Peter blinked a few times. 

“You with me?” Jonathan asked, suppressing a smile. 

“Yep,” Peter said with a yawn. He followed Jonathan over to the chair. By then a couple of the other stylists had come in. Jonathan gave them a wave. 

“I’m going to go a little shorter, give it a little more shape,” Jonathan said, using his hands to indicate where it was going to end up. “It’ll make you look a little older, okay?”

“Okay,” Peter agreed. 

Jonathan got to work. “So tell me, how have things been going so far?” he asked, snipping away at Peter’s hair. It really was _so soft_. 

“Good, I think. It’s really been making me think twice about some of the stuff I thought I didn’t have a choice about.”

“Like what?”

“Um. Last night after I finished up with Tan, I just... went home with Tony. Didn’t patrol. I had dinner with Tony and Pepper and Morgan, and then we all watched a movie together. It’d been a really long time since I’d done that.” 

Jonathan hummed. “Why do you think it’d been so long?”

“I don’t know.” Peter was quiet. “I think... I think...” He swallowed. “Okay, I’m going to say something, and I really, really don’t want it in the show. I couldn’t handle seeing this get dissected on social media.”

“Got it.” Jonathan nodded at the camera crew, and they turned off their cameras. They also walked away, so they weren’t eavesdropping. Jonathan set his clippers down to listen.

Peter took a deep breath. “I’ve been punishing myself for my uncle’s death for a really long time. I was there when he died. He was... he was shot right in front of me. I was fourteen, and I’d just gotten my powers, and I’ve always thought I should have been able to stop it. The last thing he said to me was that with great power comes great responsibility, and... and he was right, that’s true. But I think it’s gotten out of hand. I don’t think he’d want me to be living the way I am right now.”

“Oh honey.” Jonathan let his hands drop to Peter’s shoulders. He squeezed them lightly. 

Peter wiped his eyes. “Sorry. I think I’m just starting to realize that I have a responsibility to other people, too. To my aunt and Tony and Morgan and Ned and MJ ––”

“And to yourself,” Jonathan said firmly. “You have a responsibility to yourself, too, to live a life that’s healthy and even... joyful.”

“Yeah.” Peter sniffled. “I actually do get a lot of joy from being Spiderman, though. I love swinging through the city, and I love helping people. Even the little stuff –– giving someone directions or finding a lost dog, I really do love it. But last night, just sitting with them and watching a movie –– I got joy from that, too. And I want... I _need_ more of that.” 

Jonathan kept his hands on Peter’s shoulders. “Thank you for sharing that with me.”

Peter wiped his eyes again. Jonathan leaned over and got him a tissue off the box on the station. “Thanks for listening. It’s hard to talk about this stuff.” Peter cleared his throat. “You can tell the crew to come back over. I’ll, uh... I’ll give an answer you can actually use.”

Jonathan gestured to the crew, and they came back and set up. He asked Peter again why he hadn’t been spending as much time with Tony and his family, and Peter said that since they’d moved back to the city, he hadn’t been making the time the way he’d been forced to when they lived three hours away. 

“But I’m going to,” Peter concluded, looking very determined. 

“That’s great. It’s all about balance,” Jonathan said. “Too much of anything is just too much, and that’s coming from _me_.”

Peter laughed. Jonathan gave his hair a casual tousle. It was half dry, which was perfect for this next step. “So, your hair is gorge, and I don’t want to put a ton of product in it and lose all that beautiful baby softness. But it could use a little texture, so I’m going to suggest you use a salt water spray when it’s about half-dry like this.” He picked up a bottle of salt-water spray and handed it to Peter. 

Peter frowned at it. “It’s just salt water?”

“This brand also has some nice oils in it, but mostly, yes,” Jonathan said. “You know when you go swimming at the beach and your hair dries kind of stiff afterward?” Peter nodded. “This is sort of like that, but we’re just going to spritz it. Here.” He took it back and lightly spritzed Peter’s hair, then ran his hands through it. “There you go. It just gives it a nice little zhuzh. So cute.”

“Huh,” Peter said. “Okay. Cool.”

Jonathan put the clippers down and clapped his hands together. “Ready for your mani-pedi?”

Peter shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”

Why more men didn’t get mani-pedis, Jonathan had never been able to figure out. There was nothing inherently gendered about soaking your feet in warm water and having someone rub lotion all over them. He went with a green polish with for his toes and blue for his fingers. Peter elected to have his nails buffed, which Jonathan could respect. 

“Your hands are one of the parts of you that people see the most,” Jonathan told Peter while the technicians worked on their nails. “Your hands and your face, really. Taking just a little bit of time to make sure they look nice goes a long way.”

“I hadn’t thought about that, I guess,” Peter said, looking down at his hand. His technician had squared his nails off and filed them, and was now buffing them to a bright shine. 

“So, is this something you think you might do occasionally, now that you’ve done it once?” 

“Maybe,” Peter said, sounding a little dubious. “If Tony or May or MJ wanted to.”

Jonathan leaned over the arm of his massage chair. “Tell me, does Tony Fucking Stark have like the _most_ elaborate grooming routine or what?” 

Peter laughed. “Yeah, he does. Pepper says he’s got way more products in their bathroom than she does. She’s always complaining about how they creep onto her side of the vanity.”

“That definitely checks out,” Jonathan said. “So if he wanted to go with you to do this, you’d say yes? Or if your aunt wanted to?”

“Yeah, sure,” Peter said, shrugging. “I like it. I had no idea my nails could be this shiny. It’s just not something I can really see doing for myself all that often. But I really like the sea salt spray,” he added, like he was afraid of hurting Jonathan’s feelings. “I’m definitely going to keep doing that.”

Jonathan offered him a very careful high-five. “I’ll take it.”

Bobby came in a couple minutes later. Jonathan waved him over. “Hey, look at you!” Bobby said, taking in Peter. “I love the new hair.”

“Isn’t it cute?” Jonathan said. “And check out his hands, you can, like, see your face in his nails, they’re so clean and buffed.”

“Very snazzy,” Bobby said. “But now it’s my turn to steal you away.”

“Okay, but give me a hug first, Peter,” Jonathan said, hopping out of his chair. “It’s been so fabulous to spend this time with you. Tell your friend Ned I said hi.”

“I will, thanks,” Peter said, smiling, and waved as he disappeared out the door with Bobby. 

***

“So, when we came to see the apartment, you said you didn’t have room for a sofa, right?” Bobby said, as they pulled into the parking lot of the furniture store. It was far enough out in Queens to actually have a parking lot, which, if Bobby was honest, was half of why he’d chosen it. He didn’t fuck with parallel parking in New York City. 

“Right. I still don’t think there’s room.”

“There is totally room,” Bobby replied. “I have the measurements, and there’s room in your apartment for a loveseat, so that’s what we’re after today. And we might look at a couple other things, too.”

“Okay,” Peter agreed. They climbed out of the car. Bobby held the door to the store open for him.

Inside, Peter stopped and stared, looking kind of overwhelmed. “This place isn’t super expensive,” Bobby said, giving him a chance to get his bearings. “It’s a step or two up from IKEA. But their selection is really nice.”

“I have no idea how to have an opinion about anything in here,” Peter said. “I don’t think I’ve ever been furniture shopping before. My aunt and I would always just get a hand-me-down from someone we knew who was moving.”

“There’s nothing wrong with that,” Bobby said. “I’m all about upcycling.”

Peter squinted. “Does it count as upcycling if you just spray it with Febreze and shove it into your apartment?”

Bobby laughed. “I’m gonna go with ‘yes.’ Look, it’s okay if you don’t know what you want yet. Let’s just sit on a bunch of stuff and see what you like.”

It took nearly an hour, but eventually Bobby started to get a better idea of what Peter actually liked. He balked at anything with a bold pattern or a rough texture, but he liked solid colors and microfiber; he liked a deep sofa, and a chaise or an ottoman he could put his feet up on. He liked super soft, squishy cushions. 

“So is this the one?” Bobby asked. He was sitting on the edge of a coffee table. Peter was curled up on the chaise section of the loveseat across from him, holding a fluffy cushion and running his hands back and forth over it. 

“This is the one,” Peter mumbled, burrowing even deeper into the loveseat. “And I want so many of these pillows.”

Bobby smiled to himself. The apartment had felt like a monk’s cell to him the first day, but he was starting to think that Peter Parker liked his creature comforts more than he’d ever let himself admit. “We can do that,” he said. “Now, I know you have a lot of navy blue in your wardrobe, but I was thinking about going a little brighter for the loveseat. They’ve got this one in stock in the back in this. What do you think?” He held up a fabric book with a swatch of brighter blue microfiber that was closer to cerulean than navy. 

“I like that,” Peter said. “It’s not _quite_ Spiderman blue.”

“Yeah, I’m trying to avoid doing your entire apartment in Spiderman colors, it seems a little on-the-nose.”

“I like green, too,” Peter said. “And... yellow?”

“Okay, okay, opening up the color wheel. I like it. So tell me,” Bobby said, shifting to sit in a chair across from Peter. “You’ve been in your place for two years.” Peter nodded. “So why does it still look like you just moved in?”

“Um.” Peter sat up. “I don’t know. It was never a priority, I guess? I’m not there very much.”

“Well, of course not. It’s not really a place anyone would _want_ to be right now.”

“You sound like May,” Peter muttered. “She’s always telling me to put something on the walls whenever she comes over.”

“Why don’t you?”

Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s not home.”

“Where’s home then?”

Peter started to answer, then stopped. Bobby quirked an eyebrow at him. “The lake house,” Peter finally said, sounding almost reluctant. “Tony’s lake house. I stayed there for a while after... after I came back. They moved back to the city about the time my identity was revealed, and it was great –– really great –– to have them so close, but I don’t get up there as often anymore.”

“Interesting. And what’s your room like up there?”

“It’s... cozy. And it can be totally dark and silent if I want it to be, which is nice because my senses go crazy sometimes.”

That was new. Bobby was glad he’d asked. “So you need blackout curtains. Like, serious blackout curtains. We can do that. What else?”

“I don’t know. It’s totally different, you can’t replicate it in the city. You can hear the water, and in the summer there’s this hum from all the insects, and in the winter it’s just... it’s so quiet. You can even hear the snow.”

“It sounds really peaceful. It might not be possible for us to make it feel exactly the same –– that’s a very rural place and your apartment is in a very urban place –– but I think we can give you the same sense of peace and safety that you feel up there.”

Peter nodded. “That’d be great.”

“Okay. Now let’s look at some lighting, because those desk lamps you have are killing me. I want to give you something with a dimmer so you have options.”

They wandered around some more, while Peter pointed at things he liked. They tested out a few more loveseats, but Peter insisted that the one they’d found earlier was his favorite. 

He was pretty obviously _done_ by the time Karamo walked in the door. Bobby had left Peter relaxing on his soon-to-be sofa while he went to place the order. Karamo waved at him as he came in, and Bobby pointed to Peter. Karamo went to sit with him while Bobby finished up with the sales staff.

“This is nice!” Karamo was saying, when Bobby finally joined them. He gave a bounce on the loveseat. “Very comfy. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to pry you off of it, Peter. We don’t want to keep a certain someone waiting.”

“Wait, what?” Peter sat up straight. “She agreed to meet with me?”

“She did. I think you’re going to be surprised at what she has to say.”

Peter looked... well, not terrified, Bobby thought, but definitely nervous, biting his lip and almost wringing his hands together.

“Peter, I promise you,” Karamo leaned over and put his hand on Peter’s shoulder. “It’s gonna be okay.”

Peter swallowed. “Yeah. I’m sure.” 

Bobby stood up and offered Peter a hand. He hauled Peter to his feet and hugged him. “Good luck, all right? I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Thanks. I’m really looking forward to seeing the place,” Peter said with a smile. 

“You and me both,” Bobby said dryly, and shooed them out of the store. Then he pulled out his phone and called a number he almost didn’t believe was real. 

“Tony Stark.”

“Hi Tony, it’s Bobby Berk from _Queer Eye_ ,” Bobby said, feeling unaccountably nervous. 

“Hello, Bobby Berk from _Queer Eye_. How can I help you? Everything okay with Peter?”

“Everything’s great with Peter,” Bobby assured him. “You have one hell of a kid, but I think you know that. I wanted to ask –– you know the family photos I asked you for? Do you have any of you all at the lake house? I ask because Peter mentioned it as a place that’s really special to him, and I thought it would be nice to have some reminders of it in his apartment.”

“Yeah, we definitely have some,” Tony said. “Mind coming by the tower later?”

“Sure thing,” Bobby said. “See you then.” 

They disconnected. Bobby pulled out his list and checked off a couple more items. The painting had been completed this morning. The loveseat would be delivered in a couple of hours. They’d found some decent lighting options, too, and the small kitchen island with seating that he’d ordered online showed as out for delivery. 

“Rugs and drapes next,” Bobby said to himself with a nod. After spending a couple of hours with Peter, he had a much better idea of what he liked. He’d swing by a store uptown and then head to Stark Tower to pick up the photos. He’d end up working extra late tonight, but it would be worth it tomorrow when Peter walked into an apartment that no longer felt like an empty box.

***

“So, how are you feeling?” Karamo asked. 

“I was feeling good, and now I’m feeling nervous,” Peter admitted. 

“Why’s that? I think it’s a good sign that MJ was willing to meet with you.” 

“I know, I just... it’s like Schrödinger's cat,” Peter said. “As long as we kind of just weren’t talking, I could pretend that we were going to get back together at some point. But if she tells me we’re over, then... we’re over.”

“Yeah, but even if that is the answer, isn’t it better to know?” Karamo asked. “So you can move on?”

“I guess,” Peter said, in a tone that Karamo interpreted to mean ‘no.’

“Sometimes conversations are painful,” Karamo said. “But clarity is a good thing in the long-run. And good communication is key.” Communication was one of the things MJ had said was an ongoing problem in their relationship. It wasn’t just that Peter was a flake because of Spiderman, it was also that he didn’t tell her things. But Karamo didn’t need to tell Peter that; MJ could speak for herself once he got them in the room together. 

For the conversation, he’d picked a nice, quiet coffee-shop that had book-lined alcoves off to the side. The producers had reserved one of the alcoves for them, and MJ was already waiting when they arrived. Peter greeted her almost shyly, while Karamo went to buy coffee for all three of them. Peter sat down across from MJ, and Karamo claimed a seat at the end, so that it wouldn’t feel as though he was on anyone’s side. 

“It’s good to see you.” Peter seemed especially conscious of the cameras, glancing toward them awkwardly in a way they’d probably have to cut out later. “I, uh. I know this isn’t really your thing.”

“It’s not,” MJ said, hands curling around her coffee cup. “But I didn't like how we left things, and it seemed like a chance to change that. I like the haircut, by the way.”

“Oh, thanks,” Peter said, touching it. 

There was a brief silence. Karamo took that as his cue. “MJ, you said you didn’t like how the two of you left things. Can you say more about that?”

“Yeah.” She took a breath, then looked up and met Peter’s gaze square-on. “I was harsh the last time we talked. I needed some space. But I think I made you think I never wanted to talk to you again, and that isn’t true. You’re my best friend. I just... I don’t know if we can work as anything more than friends.”

Peter swallowed. “For what it’s worth, I’m really, _really_ sorry I showed up two hours late to our anniversary date.”

“Two hours late and bleeding,” she corrected him. 

“Well, I wasn’t _actively_ bleeding.” MJ glanced at him sharply, and Peter winced. “But... that’s not the point, I guess. I’m really sorry.”

She sighed. “You’re always sorry. You are the king of the abject apology. But nothing ever changes.”

“I’m trying to change. No, really, I am,” he insisted, when she looked skeptical. “Karamo can tell you –– I really want to be there more for the people in my life.”

“He’s right, MJ,” Karamo said. “He’s been making a huge effort this week.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” MJ said. “Really, for your own sake, I’m so glad to hear that. But it wasn’t just that you stood me up. It wasn’t just that I sat in that restaurant by myself for two hours, wondering if you’d died –– which, by the way, is what I wonder _every_ time you don’t show up when you say you’re going to.”

Peter frowned. “It wasn’t?”

“No, Peter. It’s that you never tell me anything.”

Peter’s frown deepened. “I tell you things.”

“No, you don’t,” MJ said flatly. “You keep me in the dark all the time, deliberately. That night you stood me up, I had no idea what you were out there doing.”

“What were you doing that night, Peter?” Karamo asked. 

Peter grimaced. “I don’t know how much I should say... I was dealing with some organized crime in Queens. I’d finally gotten a location on the ringleader, and I had to move on it quickly. NYPD was ready to move in, but the ringleader was enhanced, so I didn’t feel right about leaving them without cover.”

Karamo nodded. “Why didn’t you tell MJ that?” 

Peter shrugged. “I didn’t think it was safe for her to know. And I really did think I’d make it to dinner on time.”

“Yeah, that’s bullshit on at least two levels,” MJ said bluntly. “Level one: I don’t need you to protect me. This princess-in-a-tower crap needs to stop. Level two: that’s not the real reason you didn’t tell me. You tell yourself that it’s about protecting me or May or Ned or whoever, but it’s not. The real reason you didn’t tell me is that you don’t want to deal with my worry for you.”

“Of course I don’t want you to worry about me,” Peter said. “But you say that like I’m being selfish.”

“You _are_.”

“Okay, hold up,” Karamo interjected. “Let’s slow down here. MJ, in an ideal world, how would Peter have handled that situation?”

MJ shrugged. “It’s not that complicated. He would have told me that he had a mission that day, even if he couldn’t tell me the details, and we could have discussed whether to change our plans so that he could make them. He wouldn’t have stood me up, and I would have known that something was happening. When he showed up _bleeding_ , I would’ve been prepared.”

“Does that sound reasonable, Peter?” Karamo asked. 

“I guess,” Peter said, reluctantly. “But I still don’t get how I’m selfish for wanting you not to worry about me.”

“Because that’s not really it. It’s that you don’t want to worry about me worrying about you. And I’m sorry, Peter, but that is fucking selfish.”

Peter's eyes widened. Karamo could practically see the realization hitting him. “...oh,” he said quietly.

“And the thing is, whether you tell me or not, shit still happens,” MJ said, almost wearily. “It’s not like being kept in the dark protects me. Shit still happens, only then I’m blindsided by it, and that pisses me off. Can you understand that? Seriously, it’s not like I’m the first person in your life to say this to you –– it’s not even the first time _I’ve_ said it to you.”

“May says the same thing. Tony, too.”

“So?” MJ said. “Why don’t you believe us, then? Why do you keep thinking you know better than we do what we need to keep us safe and sane in all of this?”

“I... I hadn’t thought of it that way before,” Peter said slowly. “I... I didn’t mean to make your decisions for you, I really didn’t. I just thought... it’s a lot of stress, being Spiderman. If I can protect you from that, shouldn’t I?”

“You idiot,” MJ said, almost affectionately. “If I wanted a stress-free life, I wouldn’t have kissed you on a bridge in London when we were sixteen. I knew what I was getting into. You’re worth the stress. You _deserve_ to have people looking out for you. And I deserve to be with someone who respects my ability to say what I need.”

Karamo cleared his throat. “Thanks for being so clear, MJ. Now, Peter –– are there things you need from your relationship with MJ that you’re maybe not getting?”

Peter shook his head. “I just –– I miss you,” he said plainly to her. “I really, really miss you.”

Her face softened. “I miss you, too. I’ve missed you this whole time. But if we’re going to try this again, it has to be different this time. Really different.”

“I think I might be able to manage that,” Peter said. “I’m, uh, having kind of a party tomorrow afternoon at my place, to thank everyone who’s supported me since my identity was revealed. Will you come?”

“Yeah, I’ll come,” MJ said. The corners of her eyes crinkled and a pair of dimples, heretofore hidden, suddenly emerged. “But where are we all going to sit? On the floor like kindergarteners?”

Peter made a face. “Yeah, yeah. Bobby’s getting me a sofa. And maybe even a table and chairs.”

“ _A table and chairs_?” MJ gasped, putting a hand on her chest dramatically. “No more crumbs in the sheets? No more eating over the sink? What _will_ we do with such luxury?”

“What happened to ‘material accumulation is the means by which capitalism perpetuates itself among the middle class’?” Peter asked with a smirk, obviously teasing her. 

“Oh, it definitely is,” MJ agreed with a straight face. “But I’m also sick of eating cereal in bed.”

Peter ducked his head. “I think those days are over.”

“I won’t complain if they are.” MJ sat back and took a sip of her coffee. “So what’ve you got now?” 

Peter glanced at Karamo. “Nothing, right? We haven’t got anything scheduled until the apartment reveal in the morning.”

“That’s right,” Karamo said, settling back himself with his coffee in hand.

“I’m staying at the tower this week while they gut my place,” Peter said to MJ. “Do you... maybe want to walk back with me and have dinner? I know Morgan would love to see you.”

MJ raised her eyebrows. “You’re not going to patrol?”

“Probably afterward for an hour or two,” Peter said. “But I promised Morgan I’d be home for dinner.”

MJ tilted her head to the side and studied him briefly. “Yeah,” she finally said. “I’ll come back with you. I miss Morgan, too. And someone has to keep an eye on Stark and make sure he’s not accidentally becoming a super villain.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s what Pepper is there for. And Colonel Rhodes.”

“Nah, they both like him too much.”

Peter smiled at her. MJ smiled back. 

Karamo cleared his throat. They looked at him, seeming vaguely surprised to see him still there. “MJ, would you mind giving me and Peter a second?”

“Sure. I’ll meet you outside,” she told Peter, and slid out of the alcove. 

“So,” Karamo said to Peter. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

Peter shook his head. His ears were distinctly pink. “No, it wasn’t.”

“Do you think she has a point about you keeping her in the dark?”

“Yeah,” Peter said, fiddling with the cardboard sleeve on his cup. “May says the same thing. Tony used to tell her a lot behind my back when I was younger, but these days even he doesn’t know everything.”

Karamo reached over to squeeze Peter’s shoulder. “This is part of letting the people in your life help you –– not to mention respecting their ability to say if something is too much. It’s only fair to them.”

Peter nodded. “Thank you, for convincing me to talk to her. I think we were both too scared. Or maybe we were just too stubborn.”

“Next time just open the damn box and see that the cat’s alive, all right?” 

Peter ducked his head. “Right. Anyway –– I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Bright and early. Have a good evening, Peter.”

Peter slid out of the booth. Karamo craned his neck, watching as he left the shop and met up with MJ. The two of them started off down the sidewalk together. 

Karamo opened up the Fab Five group chat. _Mission accomplished_ , he sent. 

**Jonathan:** _YAAAAAASSSSSS QUEEN_

 **Antoni:** _That’s so sweet._.

 **Tan:** _I love a happy ending_.

 **Bobby:** _Awesome. Now get your ass over and help with this apartment, we’re going to be here until midnight_. 

Karamo grinned. _On my way._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Exactly no one will be surprised when I say that JVN is super fun to write for.


	4. DAY FOUR

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahhhh, almost done. Thanks again to Fuzzyboo for the beta.

For a few seconds upon waking to the smell of waffles and bacon wafting into his room, Peter was sure he was at the lake house. But then he opened his eyes, recognized the modernist aesthetic of the tower, and remembered why he was here. 

He rolled over, checking the clock. It was seven-thirty. He had an hour and a half before the Fab Five were due to pick him up. He threw the covers back and got up to take a shower. He was more excited than he’d have expected a few days ago. He was looking forward to seeing what they’d done to his apartment and even more to having everyone over. 

It was the first time in a long time that he’d felt even halfway in control of his life. The night before, he and MJ had come back to the tower and had dinner with Tony and Pepper and Morgan. Morgan had been over the moon to see MJ, and Tony had managed not to be _too_ embarrassing. After dinner, MJ had headed back to her apartment in Brooklyn, and Peter had swung over to Queens to patrol for a couple of hours. 

It felt good. Better. _Balanced_. 

He didn’t have any illusions that it was going to be easy to sustain in the long-term. Spiderman had the habit of eating everything else in his life, and it was going to take a lot of effort, and probably patient reminders from the people around him, for him to keep making different choices. But at least he knew now that he could –– and that he _wanted_ to. 

To Peter’s surprise, everyone was up when he emerged from his room. He’d expected Tony and maybe Morgan, who was an early riser because of gymnastics, but Pepper liked to sleep in on Saturdays. But she was there at the breakfast bar, too, though she looked a little bleary-eyed. 

“Good morning, sweetie,” she said, giving Peter a side-hug. “How’re you feeling about today?”

“Good,” Peter said, sliding onto the empty stool next to Morgan. “I’m kind of stoked to see the apartment.”

“Me too,” Tony said dryly from his place at the stove. 

“Yeah, maybe it won’t make Dad cry anymore,” Morgan said, poking Peter in the side. “Are you going to have an actual bed now?”

“A bed, a sofa, even a table and chairs. You can come over and not have to sit on the floor.”

“Ooh, fancy,” Morgan mocked, waving her hands. 

“Brat,” Peter said fondly. 

“No fighting before breakfast, kids,” Tony said. “Coffee, Pete?”

“Yes, please.” 

Tony put a mug in front of him, and also set down plates with the first round of waffles and a stack of bacon. Morgan grabbed the waffles, and Peter pointedly passed the plate of bacon to Pepper before taking it back himself. Morgan rolled her eyes and kicked his chair. 

“I want to do this more often,” Peter announced, once they’d decimated the waffles and bacon. Tony was nursing his third cup of coffee, Pepper had switched to tea, and Morgan and Peter both had orange juice. 

“Do what?” Pepper asked. 

“Stay over on Friday nights and have breakfast,” Peter replied. “I loved this when I used to come stay at the lake house.”

“Hey, say the word and there’s an apartment in this building with your name on it,” Tony said. 

Peter shook his head. “No. I need to have my own place that I pay the rent on myself. But... Friday nights and Saturday mornings, I want to be here. As often as possible.”

“We’d love to have you, kid,” Tony said, looking inordinately pleased. “But do me a favor and make sure you do something equivalent with your aunt, or I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“Yeah, of course,” Peter said. His phone chimed and he glanced down at it. 

It was Ned. _So excited about today! Good luck!_

Peter started to reply, but it chimed again with a message from May. _I’m so proud of you, honey! Let me know if you need anything. Happy and I will see you soon!_

And then a third one, only a few seconds later, from MJ. _Thinking about wearing my Fuck Racism shirt to the party. Good idea y/y?_

“What’s with the sudden popularity?” Morgan asked, trying to peer over his shoulder. 

“It’s just Ned and May and MJ,” Peter said. Another chime. “Oh crap, and Karamo. They’re downstairs. I have to go. Thanks for breakfast, I’ll see you all later –– please be on time, and yes, I know how ironic that is coming from me!”

On a Saturday morning, there were fewer people in the lobby of Stark Tower, and thank God, because the Fab Five did not keep a low profile. All five o were waiting for him, each with their own beverage from the Stark Tower coffee bar. Antoni handed the extra one he was holding to Peter. Peter sipped, then gave Tamra a thumbs up. She waved back. 

“You feeling ready for this?” Karamo asked. 

“Yeah,” Peter said, despite a sudden rush of nerves. “I really am.”

“Awesome,” Karamo said, hand landing on Peter’s shoulder and squeezing. “Let’s get this show on the road, then!”

***

The home reveal was, if Peter was honest, probably his favorite moment of any given _Queer Eye_ episode. It was amazing how much Bobby could do in such a short amount of time, and it always felt like a clean slate, free of whatever mental or emotional baggage the person had been carrying. 

There wasn’t any way to set up a camera on the cramped landing outside Peter’s apartment, so the crew was already inside. Jonathan covered Peter’s eyes with his hand, while Bobby opened the door. 

“Welcome home,” Bobby said, and Jonathan took his hand away. 

“Whoa,” Peter breathed. He’d known it would look different, but somehow he hadn’t expected _this_.

Bobby had painted the walls a light blue-gray and replaced the paint-clogged crown molding, which gave the entire space a brighter, cleaner feeling. They’d painted the window frames, too, and replaced all the dated light fixtures. A rug beneath the bed and another one under the loveseat they’d picked out made it obvious which parts of the space were the “bedroom” and “living room.” Somehow, it made the space feel bigger, even with more stuff in it. 

“So, was I right or was I right about there being room for the loveseat?” Bobby asked. 

“You were right,” Peter admitted. “Hey, I have a bedframe now!”

“You have a bedframe with storage, since we didn’t quite have space for a dresser,” Bobby clarified, pulling open one of the drawers underneath the bed. “We also gave you some organization in your closet for all the clothes Tan got for you. Oh, and pull those curtains shut for me.” 

Obediently, Peter pulled them closed. The room was immediately plunged into darkness. He pulled them open again. “That’s way better, thanks.”

“Don’t thank me yet,” Bobby said. “First come and sit on your brand new sofa right across from ....”

“Wow, an actual TV,” Peter said, sitting down on the loveseat. Bobby sat beside him, and Jonathan perched on the end of the chaise section. “This is going to be so much nicer than watching movies on my laptop.” It honestly had never even occurred to him to get a TV. It’d be visible from the bed, too, which would be nice for lounging on a lazy Sunday.

Peter blinked. He couldn’t remember the least time he’d spent a “lazy Sunday” watching movies. But this made him want to. Occasionally, anyway. 

“One thing we didn’t have room to keep was your desk,” Bobby said. “But we were able to organize your computer parts into these clear plastic stacking bins, which are easy for you to label and see what you’ve got. And then you can work at your very own _kitchen table_!” He gestured with a flourish. 

“Oh wow, this is neat,” Peter said, heading over to inspect the table, which served double duty as an island. A pair of stools stored neatly underneath, but it was easy to bring the flaps on the table up and pull the stools out. “It doesn’t take up nearly as much space as I thought it would.”

“It really doesn’t, and it makes your kitchen much more functional,” Bobby said. “We also replaced the doors of all the cabinets, since they were older than you are, and painted them out white, which is a vast improvement over that ugly 80s faux wood. And there is one more surprise.” 

“What?” Peter asked, glancing around curiously. 

Bobby pulled Peter gently over to the wall between the kitchen and living room areas. “We created a family photo gallery. I made sure we had plenty of you all at the lake house, too.”

Peter went totally speechless, staring at the gallery of photos. They must have gotten some of the prints from May, because there were several of Peter’s favorites of him and Ben, and even one of him with his parents. But there were more recent ones, too: of Peter and May, wearing matching MIT sweatshirts the day she and Tony had moved him into the dorms; of Peter and Tony asleep in a hammock together at the lake house; of Peter with Morgan, age five or six, splashing in the shallows of the lake. 

“Thank you,” Peter managed to choke out. “It’s really, it’s great.”

Bobby put his arm around Peter’s shoulders and squeezed. “We left you some room to add other photos. I wasn’t able to get any from MJ or your other friends, so that’s up to you.”

“I can do that,” Peter said, nodding. He wiped his eyes. “Thank you, so much.”

“Is this a place you can really feel at home?” Bobby asked. 

“It is,” Peter said. “Thank you. I... I knew it was going to be different, but I kind of had my doubts about how much you could do with what it was, but it’s... it feels _so much_ better.”

“Small spaces can be very homey,” Bobby said. “It’s never about how much space you have, it’s about what you do with it.”

“Yeah,” Peter said, swallowing. “I get that now.” He took a deep breath. “Okay. Okay, I’m good. It’s just a little overwhelming.”

“It can be,” Antoni said, swapping places with Bobby. “Let us know if you need a breather, okay?”

“I will,” Peter said. “But I’m okay for now.”

“Okay. Come into the kitchen, then, and I’ll show you what I have in mind for you to make for your friends and family this afternoon.”

Peter followed him into the kitchen. Jeez, even the Formica looked better, somehow, without the ugly cabinet doors hanging off their hinges. 

“So the rest of the lasagna we made the other day is in the fridge, and you can throw that in the oven to heat it up,” Antoni said. “And then I thought you could make a couple of easy Italian-inspired appetizers. The first are little meatballs you can make with the same mix of beef and Italian sausage that went into the lasagna. I’ve already mixed the meat for you” –– Antoni paused and pulled it out of the fridge –– “so all you have to do is make the meatballs. You can put a little piece of mozzarella inside each one, like so...” Antoni showed him how to take a piece of cheese and mold the meatball around it. 

“Do I pan fry or bake these?” Peter asked, figuring it had to be one of the two. 

“Pan fry to get them brown, then bake to finish them off,” Antoni said. “I’ve left you the instructions. Now, the other appetizer is even easier. It’s just a small ball of fresh mozzarella, one of these cherry tomatoes, and a basil leaf on a toothpick. Just like that, you’ve got a caprese skewer. It’s the Italian flag, see?” He held it up. 

“I think I can handle that,” Peter said. 

Antoni showed him where the marinara for the meatballs and the balsamic vinegar dip for the caprese skewers were, and then it was Jonathan’s turn. 

Peter let himself be pulled into his tiny bathroom. It had also received a fresh coat of paint, a new light fixture, and a new cabinet over the toilet. 

“Okay, so,” Jonathan said, opening the cabinet. “Here we have the sea salt spray for your beautiful curls, and _here_ we have a charcoal-based facial cleanser. You should use this at the end of the day, especially if you’ve been out Spidermanning, get all those pores cleared out. And _this_ ” –– he held up another tube –– “is some really great water-based moisturizer. You put this on after the cleanser.”

“Got it,” Peter said. “And what are these?” He pointed to the other two containers in the cabinet.

“These are masks,” Jonathan said. “This is a clay-based one, you want to do it on, like, a Sunday when you’re not going anywhere, because it brings a lot of stuff out of your skin. And this is a vitamin C mask, it’s going to brighten you up, so it’s a great thing to do any time you want a gorgeous little self-care moment, but especially if you want to look extra special for your lady friend. Speaking of which,” Jonathan added, grabbing a zipped bag off another shelf, “since you said you probably wouldn’t get a manicure all that often, I got you a home nail care kit. You’ve got scissors and a file and then you use this to buff your nails till you can see your face in them.”

“Oh, that’s cool,” Peter said. “I’ll definitely use that.”

“Amazing. Ready to give us a fashion show?”

‘Ready’ seemed to be overstating things, but Peter knew this was part of it. “Sure.” 

“Tanny, take the wheel!” Jonathan called, bouncing out of the bathroom. 

Tan had obviously been waiting. He pulled Peter over to the closet and showed him a row of button down shirts, organized neatly by color. “Almost any of these will work with almost any of your t-shirts,” he told Peter. “And I also got you some basic suit jackets, because occasionally you need more than a button down and a tie, but less than a full-on suit.”

“Suit jacket over a t-shirt is basically Tony’s uniform when he leaves the house,” Peter said, eyeing the suit jackets. 

“That is certainly a signature look of his,” Tan agreed. “But the point isn’t for you to look like Tony, it’s for you to look like yourself. Right?”

“Right,” Peter agreed. 

“Excellent.” Tan pulled a button down shirt, a t-shirt, and a pair of pants that had all been hanging together at one end of the closet, obviously pre-selected and ready to go. “All right, first look. Let’s see it without a tie, and with these shoes. Let me know if you need help.”

“Okay,” Peter agreed. He went into the bathroom and shut the door. Tan had given him brown pants, his “Han Shot First” t-shirt, and a green button down. He finger-combed his hair and stepped cautiously out of the bathroom.

“Hey, looking _good_!” Karamo said. 

“Wow!” Antoni said. “I love a nice pressed button down.”

“Give us a little walk and a spin, girlfriend,” Jonathan said. 

Peter obliged, hoping he didn’t look _too_ awkward. 

“I am _loving_ it,” Jonathan announced. “We’re going to call this style ‘nerdcore.’”

Peter couldn’t help but laugh. Tan handed him a different button down –– light blue this time –– and one of the ties he’d chosen. “Second look. Same trousers. You can leave the t-shirt on or take it off,” he told Peter. 

Peter went back into the bathroom and swapped out the green button down and t-shirt for the light blue. It was followed by the tie –– red checked with metallic flecks ––which he actually managed to tie successfully. He emerged to cheering and even a couple of whistles. 

“That look says, ‘I know my shit, and you’d better not give me any, honey,’” Jonathan said. 

“That tie is awesome and actually kind of daring,” Bobby put in.

“Peter chose it,” Tan informed the rest of them. “This is his ‘meeting with investors’ look. And if he really wants to impress, we can always add a suit jacket...” Tan held it out and Peter shrugged into it. It wasn’t the pinstriped one they’d chosen to go with the suit, but rather one that picked up the deeper blue in the tie. Tan buttoned the top button. “What do you think, boys?”

“Impressive but not overly formal,” Antoni said. “How do you feel, Peter?”

“I feel really good,” Peter said, looking down at himself. “But I guess the question is –– would you give me money?”

“Hell yeah,” Karamo said. “I’d give you _all_ the money.”

“Okay, last look,” Tan said, ushering him back to the bathroom with a stack of clothes in his hands –– the pinstripe suit this time, with the fedora perched on top. “Brown shoes. Let me know if you need help.”

Peter still couldn’t believe that he’d let Tony and Tan talk him into this. He’d never imagined himself as someone who owned a suit like this, not even after Tony had taken him under his wing and started making noises about handing off Stark Industries to him someday. It had never felt real. But when he put this suit on, it suddenly did. 

He didn’t need Tan’s help this time. He managed to get the tie right, and the lapels lay flat without much fussing. He picked a piece of lint off his shoulder and added the hat. 

He looked at himself in the mirror and exhaled slowly. Then he opened the door and stepped out.

“Oh. My. God,” Jonathan gasped, and pretended to swoon across Karamo and Antoni’s laps. 

“Whoa,” Bobby said, eyes wide. 

“Are you prepared for the thirst tweets?” Antoni asked. “Because I promise you, they are coming.”

“I knew you were cute, honey, but I didn’t realize you had legs for days,” Jonathan said, sitting up. “And that _hat_. You know not everyone can wear that hat.”

“The hat was Tony’s idea,” Tan said, “and I’ll admit, I was a little skeptical at first, but it’s really grown on me.”

“Me too,” Peter said.

“Give us a spin and a shimmy this time,” Jonathan demanded. 

Peter walked the length of the apartment, spun, and did his best to “shimmy.” He’d always been too self-conscious to be much of a dancer unless he had a pint and a half of Asgardian mead in him. He got wolf-whistled anyway, which might’ve had more to do with how his ass looked in the suit pants than with his dance moves. 

“You look great, Peter, you really do,” Karamo said, and patted the space beside him on the loveseat. Peter dropped down onto it and took his hat off, resting it on his knee. “So tell us, how are you feeling?”

“I feel great,” Peter said. “I was a little skeptical about all of this –– not about you all, but I didn’t think I needed it Or maybe I thought I... I don’t know. That I didn’t deserve it. To be honest, I didn’t even realize how much of a mess everything was until I was forced to stop and look at my life.”

“What have you learned?” Karamo asked. 

Peter took a deep breath. “That I can’t let Spiderman drown out everything else in my life. It’s important, but so are the people I love, and I need to show up for them so that they know that. And I need to let them show up for me, too, by telling them more about what’s going on and letting them help when they can. Even if it means they’re going to worry about me.”

“That’s right,” Karamo said. “As a parent, I’m here to tell you, there’s nothing you can do to stop Tony and May from worrying about you. That’s what we do.”

Peter looked down at his hands. “You know that first day when I said I was really tired? I _was_ tired, but I think I’d also been really lonely, too. It can be a really lonely life, with the superhero gig, but I’d made it lonelier than it needs to be.”

“Do you feel lonely now?” Karamo asked. 

Peter shook his head, looking up again. “No. Not at all.”

“Good,” Karamo said. “You got a whole lot of people who want to be there for you. You _deserve_ that.”

Peter nodded. His throat felt tight, and he had to swallow a few times before he could speak again. “Thank you,” he finally said. “I’m so grateful for this experience. It’s changed my life, and I really wasn’t expecting that.”

“Well, you’ve changed so many people’s lives for the better,” Antoni said. “It was our pleasure to do this for you.”

“And don’t think you’re going to get rid of us so easily,” Jonathan added. “I live in New York, and I have your number, and now I know that the best coffee in the city is at the coffee bar in the lobby of Stark Tower. We’re gonna hang out. I gotta meet this Ned.”

Peter groaned. “Oh God, you might regret that. Ned’s great, he just has no chill at all.”

“Chill is overrated,” Jonathan declared. “I’m serious, I’m going to text you. Someone’s gotta keep cutting those baby soft curls of yours, and it might as well be me.”

Peter nodded, ducking his head. Karamo had already told him that he was going to check in with him, like he did everyone they had on the show. He knew that there were going to be days when it was really hard to balance everything in his life, and it helped to know that on those days, he could reach out if he needed to. 

“Okay,” Karamo said. “We’re going to leave you to get ready for the party. But first, we need a big group hug. Come on, get in here.”

Peter let himself get swept in, smashed between Karamo and Antoni, with his head pressed against Jonathan’s shoulder. It was kind of overwhelming, but also warm and supportive and uplifting. It felt like something Peter could take with him even after all of this was over. 

Also, they all smelled _so good_ , it was ridiculous.

“We’re proud of you, Peter,” Karamo said once they’d pulled away. “Even though you had misgivings at the beginning, you committed anyway. I know you’re used to being physically brave as Spiderman, but it takes a different type of bravery to do the work you did this week. Remember that when it gets hard.”

Peter nodded. “I will.”

“And don’t forget to heat up the lasagna,” Antoni added, as they all started saying good-bye and filing out the door. 

“Do the vitamin C mask before this afternoon!”

“French tuck!”

“Never sleep on a mattress on the floor again!”

“I mean it,” Karamo said, lingering in the apartment once the others had left. “I’m so proud of you. If you need help, reach out –– to me or May or Tony or MJ. We’re all here for you. And you, Peter Parker, just you, just the way you are, are _enough_. Say that for me, will you?”

Peter swallowed. “I, Peter Parker, am enough.”

Karamo squeezed his shoulder and left. Peter listened to the five of them trooping down five flights of stairs and out the front door. He heard the SUV start and pull away from the curb. 

It was over. 

Except... it wasn’t. Peter still had two people with cameras in his apartment, so that they could film the party that afternoon. He needed to change his clothes and get to work. 

***

Ned was the first person to show up, fifteen minutes early, while Peter was wiping off the vitamin C mask in his bathroom. Peter patted his face dry with a towel and went to answer the door. 

“Hey, sorry, I know I’m early, I just couldn’t wait any –– whoa! I like the haircut,” Ned greeted him. “And your face is all shiny.”

Peter laughed. “Thanks. Come on in.”

“So tell me all about –– Oh my God, look at this place! Peter! YOU HAVE A BED!”

“I know, right? It’s got storage underneath, too. And check out my ––”

“SOFA! It’s so nice. Oh, and these cushions are so soft. Hey, you’ve got a TV! I don’t have a TV! We’re doing movie nights here from now on.”

“Sure,” Peter said, feeling strangely satisfied by knowing that his place was somewhere his friends were going to want to hang out now. 

“Do you need any help getting ready?” Ned asked. 

“Nope,” Peter said. “I’m just waiting for the meatballs and the lasagna to come out of the oven. Do you want a beer?”

“Sure.”

Peter got Ned a beer from the fridge, and then went to shrug into the button-down he’d chosen for the party. 

“So how was it?” Ned asked. He hovered in the doorway to the bathroom, watching as Peter fussed with his curls. “Was it great? You look like it was great. I can’t believe I didn’t get to meet any of them!”

“You might still,” Peter said. “Jonathan wants to hang out, and he specifically said he wants to meet you.”

“WHAT. No way. Jonathan Van Ness wants to _meet me_? I am not cool enough for that.”

Peter laughed. “You hang out with Tony Stark all the time. You’ve met all the Avengers.”

“Yeah, but JVN is like... a cultural icon.”

Peter raised his eyebrows. “Tony saved the universe.”

“It’s not a competition! I’ve known Tony for years, I’ve become immune to him. JVN is next level cool!”

“You know they’re taping right now, right?” Peter said, glancing toward the cameras.

“Hey, if I’m actually going to meet Jonathan Van Ness, he should know what he’s getting into.”

Privately, Peter agreed. “I already told him you have no chill. He said chill was overrated.”

“You see?” Ned said happily. “That is just _cool_.”

The doorbell rang again just as Peter was piling the meatballs on a plate. He delegated that task to Ned and went to let in Happy and May. 

“Hi sweetie –– oh my God, look at you!”

“Look at him? Look at this place,” Happy said. “I didn’t think this crappy apartment could look this good.”

“Thanks, Happy,” Peter said dryly. He hugged May, then let her hold his face in her hands and look at him. 

“Oh honey, you look amazing,” she said. “And so _happy_. I don’t think I’ve seen you look this happy in ages.”

“It was really great to take a break and kind of think about things. Plus, Jonathan gave me this vitamin C stuff to put on my face, I think that might be part of it.”

May laughed. “Well? Give us the grand tour!” 

Peter gave them what was rapidly becoming his standard tour of the apartment and got them both beers. Happy and Ned got plates of meatballs and caprese skewers and went to sit on the sofa, while May lingered in the kitchen with Peter as he pulled the lasagna out of the oven. 

“They did a really nice job with these, didn’t they?” she said, looking at the wall of family photos. “I love that one of you and Ben.”

“Yeah, that’s a nice one. I also really like that one of you and me at MIT. And the one of all of us at the lake.”

“Was that Tony’s birthday?” 

“Yeah. Just a couple of months after Thanos.” Tony had still been recovering at the time. He was smiling in the photo, with Peter on one side and Morgan on the other, Pepper leaning over the back of the couch to drape her arms around his neck, but Peter remembered how much the day had taken it out of him. They’d spent the whole next day piled on Tony’s bed, watching movies, because Tony was too doped up on pain medication to do anything else. Tony had said it was worth it, though, to celebrate being alive to see his next birthday. 

“I’m so proud of you, Peter,” May said, putting her arm around his waist. 

“Thanks,” Peter replied, leaning into her. 

The doorbell rang. May squeezed him one last time, then let him go so he could answer it. 

It was Tony and Pepper and Morgan, bearing a bottle of wine (Pepper), a bouquet of flowers (Morgan), and a bottle of whiskey Peter would never touch (Tony). 

“Wow,” Morgan greeted him. “This place looks like a real human lives here.” 

“ _Morgan_ ,” Pepper admonished her. “Peter, you look wonderful, and so does the apartment.”

“I’m with Morgan,” Tony said, looking around. “Look, there’s seating that isn’t the floor.”

“You’re both terrible,” Peter groaned. “Just for that, you can show yourselves around. There’s beer, soda, and food in the kitchen, and I guess we can open the wine, though I’m not sure if I have a corkscrew...”

“You do now,” Tony said, producing one from a canvas tote. “I bet Bobby even gave you wine glasses.”

Bobby _had_ given him wine glasses, Peter discovered. He grabbed two of them and used his new corkscrew to open the bottle of wine while everyone else wandered around his apartment and said hello to each other. He poured a glass for Pepper and one for Tony, and was trying to decide whether he wanted to drink anything himself before his big speech when his phone buzzed with a text message.

_Come out onto the landing._

Peter took a deep breath, trying to quell his nerves. The small camera crew was busy filming Peter’s nearest and dearest mingling and somehow, miraculously, wasn’t paying any attention to Peter himself at that second. He managed to slip out without anyone noticing.

“Hey loser,” MJ greeted him. She actually had worn her “Fuck Racism” t-shirt. 

“Hi MJ,” Peter said. “Thanks for coming. Come on in.”

“Wait,” she said, stopping him. “Come here, first.”

“What’s going –– mmph,” Peter mumbled as she kissed him. “Oh.”

“I didn’t want that to become a thing,” she said, pulling back. “Okay, now we can go in.”

MJ was the polar opposite of Ned in that she did not express a lot of enthusiasm about anything. Even so, her eyes widened when she saw the apartment. Peter suspected that Happy and Tony weren’t the only ones who’d had doubts about how good his place could possibly look. 

“You can see the TV from both the sofa and the bed,” Peter pointed out to her quietly, putting his arm around her waist. “I was thinking about movies in bed on weekend mornings.”

“I like that idea,” she said, leaning into him subtly. 

“They gave me a lot more storage, too,” Peter said, pointing out the drawers under the bed. “I, uh. I don’t want to overstep, but I think there’s enough that if you wanted to keep some stuff here, you could. If you want.” 

“Let’s negotiate that later,” MJ said, glancing toward the cameras. “But I like the general idea.”

Morgan grabbed MJ before they got much further into the room and dragged her over to squish onto the loveseat with her and Ned. Peter got her a beer and a plate of food, and decided that he probably couldn’t justify putting off his speech any longer now that everyone was here. The sooner he did it, the sooner he could start enjoying himself. He got a beer from the fridge, so he had something to toast with, and then stood in front of the TV awkwardly until everyone noticed and stopped talking. 

“So, um... thanks, everyone, for coming,” Peter said. “I’m really glad to have you here. I want to thank everyone who helped out this week. It was a crazy ride, but I learned a lot about myself and got to think a lot about how I’ve been living my life. I’m really grateful to the Fab Five for helping me do that, and I’m grateful to all of you for having been there for me for so long. I know I haven’t always been easy to live with, I know I haven’t always been the best friend or son or boyfriend or brother, but you’ve all stuck by me anyway.”

“We love you, Peter,” May called. 

“Thanks,” Peter said, grinning. “I love you all, too. And because I love you all, I’m really going to make some changes. Spiderman’s kind of swallowed everything in my life, and I’m going to try not to let that happen again. I’m going to be better about showing up when I say I will, and –– and about letting you all know when I need help. A wise person told me that I need to respect your ability to say when something is too much, instead of deciding for you, so... so I’m going to do that. I’m going to _try_ to do that, but I’ll probably need you all to tell me when I’ve screwed up.”

“On it,” MJ said, raising her beer. The others laughed.

Peter grinned. “I know I can count on you, MJ. Anyway. I just wanted to say I love you all, and thank you, and I’m glad I have places for you to sit now. Cheers.”

Everyone toasted. Then May got up and hugged him again, followed swiftly by Tony, Morgan, and Ned. He let himself get hauled over to the sofa and shoved down to sit in the middle, with MJ on one side, Ned on the other, and Morgan on the floor, leaning against his legs. Tony and Pepper piled onto the chaise, and May wedged herself in on the arm, on the other side of MJ. Happy –– who hated having his photo taken –– stood in front of the TV with Peter’s StarkPhone. 

“Say ‘Fab Five’,” he said. 

“FAB FIVE!”

“That’s one for the photo wall,” Tony said, once Happy had handed Peter’s phone back to him.

“Yeah,” Peter said, flicking through the photos Happy had taken –– at himself, surrounded by all of the people he loved best in the world, in a place that felt like home. “Yeah, it definitely is.”


	5. EPILOGUE

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks once again to Fuzzyboo for being a stellar beta-reader who made me pick a side on loveseat vs. love seat and reminded me that MJ had already put her bowl in the sink.

The new season of _Queer Eye_ dropped on Netflix the first Friday in June. Peter had taken his qualifying exam the week before and was getting back to doing Spiderman stuff after a few weeks away while he prepped. Knowing he’d be too nervous to concentrate at work, he’d taken the day off. 

He’d stayed out late the night before, patrolling in Jamaica, where he didn’t get to as often. It was after eight when he woke. MJ was up and eating cereal at the table. 

“Morning,” Peter mumbled, rolling over. 

“Good morning,” MJ said. “Happy _Queer Eye_ Day.”

Peter was very suddenly wide awake. “Oh shit.” He sat up. “Is the internet talking about it yet? What are they saying? Are there reviews? Were the editors nice to me?”

“Whoa, calm down.” MJ got up to put her bowl in the sink. “No one’s seen it yet. You seemed pretty chill about it yesterday.”

“Yeah, well.” Peter swallowed. “I’m feeling decidedly less chill right now. I can’t believe I have to wait twelve more hours to watch it.”

MJ sat on the edge of his bed. “Do you want to watch it together right now?”

Peter hesitated. “We said we’d all get together at the tower tonight.”

“Yeah, but you know no one will care if you’ve already seen it. If you’re going to drive yourself crazy all day, it’s better for us to just rip the band-aid off. We can still go over to Tony and Pepper’s tonight.”

Peter knew she was right. “Do you have time before work?”

MJ shrugged. “I took a personal day. I had a feeling you were going to be kind of a disaster.”

Peter stared at her, surprised, though he thought he shouldn’t have been. “You’re the best, you know that?”

“Yes, I do.” MJ changed into a clean pair of sweats out of her drawer and grabbed the remote off the couch before jumping back into bed. “All right, let’s do this.”

Peter had given a handful of interviews after he came out as Spiderman, and he’d always found it really weird to watch himself on TV, especially when he didn’t have the suit to serve as armor against the outside world. This was no exception. It was even weirder to watch himself in the apartment the way it used to be, while sitting in the apartment the way it currently was –– like a funhouse mirror. A really terrible funhouse mirror.

“God, I can’t believe I used to live like that,” he muttered. He had his hands over his face and was mostly watching through his fingers. “Why did you ever put up with it?”

MJ patted him on the arm. “You have many fine qualities. I won’t say that staying over here hasn’t become a lot more comfortable, though.”

It wasn’t just the apartment. Peter didn’t know if it would be obvious to total strangers, but he could see now just how much he’d been teetering on the edge. He hadn’t thought that was true at the time, but it was obvious to him now. He’d been burned out, exhausted, lonely, and he hadn’t realized he could be any other way. Thank God the people closest to him had seen it. 

_“I just want him to be happy,”_ May told Karamo on a bench outside the Italian restaurant where they’d made the lasagna. She sounded choked up, and Peter felt his own throat tighten in sympathy. _“I’m so unbelievably proud of him, but I’m worried he’ll never figure out how to be happy. I don’t want him to burn out. And I worry about him, too.”_

_“I can only imagine. It must be so hard knowing that he’s putting himself in danger all the time.”_

_“It is. But I know this is who he is. It’s what makes Peter_ Peter _. And I love him for it, even when it scares me.”_

“Are you crying?” MJ asked him suspiciously. 

“No, you are,” Peter mumbled, hiding his face in his pillow. 

She patted him on the head. “Such a sap.” 

Things did not get less weird or less emotional after that. The next scene was the conversation Peter had had with Karamo about his relationship with MJ. There was a little bit of a break after that, while Peter was fitted by Tan, but _then_ was the scene Peter had known was coming, where Karamo met with MJ. This was new to Peter, and he’d definitely been low-key dreading it.

_“Look, I love Peter. But it’s not just that I want someone who’s going to show up to dinner on time. It’s that he keeps making decisions for me, thinking he’s protecting me, and he’s not. It makes it worse._

_“Have you ever told him that?”_

_“About a thousand times. He never listens.”_

_“What if he was ready to listen? Would you be willing to say it one more time?”_

_“Yeah, I guess. One more time, if he’s ready.”_

“Thanks for being willing to try one more time,” Peter said, rolling over so he could bury his face in her hair. 

“Thanks for finally listening,” she said, putting her hand on the small of his back. 

They stayed like that, MJ watching and Peter mostly listening, until Peter’s phone buzzed on his nightstand. He grabbed for it, hoping it wasn’t his lab. 

It wasn’t. It was Tony. 

_How’re you feeling, kid?_

_Okay,_ he typed back with one eye on the screen, where Jonathan was now cutting his hair. _MJ and I are watching it now. Sorry I couldn’t wait. Too nervous._

_I get it. Is it okay so far?_

_So far, yeah. Call you later?_

_Sure._

Peter put his phone down. He watched himself wander around a furniture store with Bobby and tried to ignore the fact that MJ was doing something on her phone. Knowing her, she was coordinating with Ned on who was going to handle his social media response once that inevitably became necessary. But when Karamo appeared, and Peter realized that their scene was up next, he poked her to get her attention. 

“Did you think we were going to get back together when you agreed to meet with me?” Peter asked.

“Honestly? No,” MJ said. “No matter what Karamo said, I didn’t think you were ready to change. Not enough for this to work. But I’ve never been this happy to be wrong.”

 _“You idiot,_ the MJ on the screen said affectionately. _“If I wanted a stress-free life, I wouldn’t have kissed you on a bridge in London when we were sixteen. I knew what I was getting into. You’re worth the stress. You_ deserve _to have people looking out for you. But I deserve to be with someone who respects me and my ability to say what I need.”_

Peter shifted over so he was lying with his head resting against her hip, one arm thrown across her legs. “I still wish I could spare you the stress. I know I can’t, I know it’s your choice, but I’m never going to stop wishing I could.”

“And I’m never going to stop wanting you to let me share the load,” MJ replied, threading her fingers through his hair. “That’s what a partner does.”

“I know. I’m trying.”

“I know you are. I wouldn’t be here if you weren’t.”

The only other part Peter hadn’t been present for was the Fab Five’s viewing of the video of his party. He was nervous about it, even though he thought the party had gone well. He’d had everyone over again since, but never at all at once; despite Bobby’s best efforts, the apartment was still too small for so many people, and there wasn’t quite enough seating for everyone. But that was okay; Peter preferred small groups. And he definitely preferred not being the center of attention.

The Fab Five loft was ridiculously sunny for Midtown Manhattan. Antoni had made fancy mochas for everyone to drink as they gathered to watch Peter’s video. 

_”Almost as good as the ones in Stark Tower,”_ Jonathan remarked, sipping his. _“Oh honey, that vitamin C mask did you all sorts of good,”_ he added to the TV. _“Look how fresh and glowy his face is!”_

 _”I really love what you ended up doing with that apartment, Bobby,”_ Karamo said. _“This might be one of my favorite homes you’ve done.”_

_“Aww, thank you.”_

_“Oh, is that Ned?”_ Jonathan asked, sitting up. _“He’s Peter’s best friend, he was telling me about him.”_

 _“Ooh, good combination of t-shirt and button down,”_ Tan said. _“I kind of wish he was wearing a belt with those trousers, but I guess we can’t have everything.”_

_“Oh wait, here’s his aunt,”_ Antoni said. _“She was amazing.”_

__“She really was,”_ Karamo agreed. _

__

__

_“He got those meatballs just right,”_ Antoni said, watching Peter pull them out of the oven. _“He’s actually a really good cook, he just has to make the time for it.”_

_“I mean, you could have said that about every aspect of Peter’s life, other than Spiderman,”_ Karamo said. _“He just needed to make the time for it. But you can see how differently he’s carrying himself already. That first day, we could barely get him to smile, remember that?”_

__“He looked miserable,”_ Tan agreed. _

__

__

_“Oh hel_ lo _there, Tony Fucking Stark,”_ Jonathan said as Tony, Pepper, and Morgan arrived. _“I do love a silver fox.”_

_“Pepper Potts could murder you with one shoe,”_ Tan told him. _“She wouldn’t even break a sweat.”_

_“Oh yeah, that is definitely true,”_ Jonathan agreed. _“Aww, look at them all together.”_

_“Tony gave me so many photos of them all at the lake house that there wasn’t space for all of them,”_ Bobby said. _“It’s obvious how much they adore Peter. All Tony wanted was for Peter to see himself as just as worthy of time and attention and care as he sees everyone else.”_

_“Shh, shh, shh,”_ Antoni said, as the camera focused in on Peter, in front of everyone else. 

“Oh God,” Peter moaned, and shoved his head under his pillow so he wouldn’t have to watch himself be a dork in front of everyone else. “Tell me when it’s over.” 

Thanks to his enhanced hearing, the pillow didn’t do much to muffle the sound of his own voice. He guessed it could have been worse. He hadn’t stumbled over his words or said something really stupid. It was just... painfully earnest. He’d owed that level of sincerity to all the people in his life, but it made him die a little inside to imagine millions of people watching him be that vulnerable. 

Though the truth was that it made the idea of being vulnerable in front of people who really knew him way less scary. He’d been a lot more open with MJ this time around. He was trying really hard to tell May and Tony more, too, and if it made them worry about him... well, he was dealing with the guilt that came from that. 

"You can come out now,” MJ said, and Peter emerged from beneath his pillow. “Oh hey, it’s our epilogue!” 

“Ooh,” Peter said, sitting up straight. This, he _was_ excited about. He and MJ had done a little photoshoot as a couple after they officially got back together and sent the photos to the producers. They appeared on the screen now, Peter with his arms around MJ at the park, MJ shoving him into a fountain, and then the two of them dripping wet, kissing. 

“PETER + MJ = 4-EVER,” it said underneath. 

_“OH MY GOD, YAAASSSS!”_ Jonathan yelled, throwing his arms in the air. _“They are so CUTE.”_

_“I knew they were going to get back together!”_ Karamo said, and high-fived Tan and Antoni and Bobby. _“You go, Peter!”_

_“To Peter,”_ Antoni said, picking up his fancy coffee drink. _“Who went from a Spider-mess to his Spider-best!”_

_“TO PETER!”_ they all yelled, and the episode faded to black. 

MJ used the remote to turn it off. She rolled over onto her side and propped herself up on her arm, looking down at Peter. “So?” 

“It wasn’t that bad,” he admitted. “Embarrassing, but not... horrible.” 

“Good. Do you want to know what people are saying?” 

Peter looked up at her, mouth slightly agape. “You said no one had watched it yet!” 

“I lied just a little, and also, that was an hour ago. Want to hear some of the tweets?” 

“I guess,” Peter said, somewhat reluctantly. 

MJ sat up, phone in hand. “‘Peter Parker is a precious muffin too good for this world, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.’” 

“Oh my God, why a _muffin_?” 

“‘Peter Parker is a legit snack. I want to bite him.’” 

“Shit, Antoni was right about the thirst tweets. I’ve never really had thirst tweets before. Is that weird for you?” 

“Like I care what some rando on the internet thinks about your ass. Anyway, she’s right, you _are_ a legit snack. But I’m the only one who gets to bite you.” 

“Truth,” he agreed, grinning up at her. 

“Next one. ‘GQ, why hasn’t Peter Parker graced your cover yet?’ Good question. I bet they’ll be calling after this. ‘OMG Tony Stark’s proud dad vibes with Peter Parker killed me. Seriously, I’m dead.’ It’s true. I’m not a fan of generational wealth, but you can see how proud Tony is at the idea of passing SI on to you.” 

“This is so embarrassing,” Peter mumbled. 

“Oh, it gets better. ‘Peter Parker should never wear anything except that pinstripe suit. Fuck the Spider-shtick, his ass is his real super power. And I don’t even like dudes.’ Can’t argue with that,” MJ added with a shrug. 

“I feel objectified.” 

“In a bad way?” 

“... no.” 

“Thought not. Here, you’ll like this one. ‘May Parker is the hero we all need in our lives.’” 

“Well, _that’s_ true.” 

"Ha, here’s one. ‘My connection to Peter Parker is that we both use sea salt spray in our hair. I’ll take it.’” Peter snorted. MJ grinned. “And here’s the last one I’ll torture you with for now: ‘Peter, if this thing with MJ doesn’t work out, feel free to slide straight into my DM’s.’” 

“Ugh, the worst,” Peter said, hitting her with a pillow. “Really, though, that’s it? People are just talking about my butt and saying nice things about Tony and May?” 

“I mean, there are assholes,” MJ said, “because there are always assholes, but mostly, yeah. And you’re not obligated to pay attention to the assholes.” 

“Okay,” Peter agreed, taking a deep breath. 

“So, now that that’s over, what do you want to do today?” MJ asked. 

“I have to make lasagna this afternoon.” 

MJ rolled her eyes. “Okay, but this morning. Want to go to the park and take selfies and send them to Ned to brag about having the day off?” 

Peter laughed. “Definitely.” 

“Awesome. I call first shower.” MJ slid out of bed and headed for the bathroom. 

Peter rolled over onto his stomach, propping his chin on his hands. He was a little sad that the whole thing was really, truly, a hundred percent over now. But he was also relieved. It had been... a lot. 

His phone buzzed. He glanced at it and saw that Karamo had texted him. _Big day. How’re you doing?_

So maybe it wasn’t _really_ over. Maybe it was one of those experiences that kind of just kept going, but in the best way. _Okay_ , he wrote back. _MJ and I watched it already. It was embarrassing but not too bad._

_Glad to hear it. I think the editing was really good. But let me know if you want to talk, okay? I’m around._

_Thanks, will do._

Peter held his phone in his hand for a moment, then called Tony. 

“Hey, kiddo,” Tony greeted him. “How was it?” 

“I did not expire of embarrassment,” Peter said, “so about as good as can be expected.” 

Tony laughed. “Well, I’m looking forward to seeing it tonight. You’re still coming over, right? And staying?” 

“Yep. Bringing lasagna.” 

“Excellent. We’re all excited to watch it together. Though Morgan went on Twitter this morning and apparently people are being gross about your butt? She said she’s traumatized.” 

Peter laughed. “Poor Mo. Tell her I’ll make it up to her. Hey, can we do waffles tomorrow?” 

“Sure, kid, anything you want.” 

“I want waffles and bacon.” 

“Done.” 

The shower turned off in the bathroom. “I gotta go,” Peter said. “I’ll see you later, all right?” 

“Yep. But before you go –– I’m really proud of you, Peter. This took a lot of guts. I’m so proud of you.” 

Peter felt his face go red, but he smiled anyway. “Thanks. You know what? I’m proud of me, too.” 

“You should be. See you tonight.” 

“See you tonight.” 

Peter disconnected. He looked down at the phone in his hand, and then around his apartment. At the cereal box MJ had left out on the kitchen table, at the wall of family photos, at the lumpy afghan May had made him as a housewarming present, draped across the loveseat. 

“Hey, are you showering or what?” MJ asked, opening the bathroom door and letting out a cloud of steam. 

Peter shook his head. “Yeah,” he said, sliding out of bed. “I’m on my way.” 

_Fin._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all! Except that a couple of people requested time stamps where JVN meets Tony and Ned so I might still do those if inspiration strikes.
> 
> Thanks for being great readers. Posting this was a lot of fun. <3 <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> Take care of yourselves, friends. And if so inclined, please feed the writer in the form of a comment or a kudo.


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